I found myself having to rewind a lot as the story is so dull and improbable and I would suddenly realise that had missed several minutes due to lack of interest/boredom or just zoning out. But sadly I found the story thin and rather immature! Everything was too black and white, problems too easily overcome, characters too simplistic, irritating or both. I SO wanted this to be good as I love ballet and thought I was on to a winner as other reviewers seem to be in love with this book. I will definitely keep an eye out for this author and I will continue to listen to this narrator. The story is from both Victoria and Anna’s point of view and I think that made the story for me. It was a very slow burn romance and I love that. They have lots of ups and downs in the story. Victoria is impressed with the way Anna dances and believes she is a rare find and has a special dancing talent that Victoria haven’t seen in years, so offers her the chance to be a principal in a new show she wants to direct. That’s when Anna has a lesson with a very strict teacher called Victoria who was a professional principal ballet dancer but got hurt during a performance, they didn’t get along at first as Anna’s phone went off in class and that was nearly the end of her career before it even started, but given a chance to prove herself to Victoria. The story is about Anna who joins a professional ballet school to join the team as just a background dancer. The narration was amazing, the voices were different so you could easily tell who was who, and the narrator brought the story to life. BTW I found that speeding up the narration made it flow much better and the awful, clipped, upper-class English accent grated less on my ears.This was a fantastic book so well written.
Also appreciated are her attempts at a range of regional accents which, despite being unconvincing, are helpful because they differentiate between the various characters. To the narrator's credit is her portrayal of atmosphere and emotion. This left me to question why the posh accent was used by the narrator at all since it was obviously unnecessary and I was annoyed because it spoiled the audiobook so much. The bad and out of place, posh, upper-class accent is totally cringe-worthy and oddly changes to become a more ordinary, middle-class English as the audiobook progresses.
She also uses a very unconvincing, strange sounding and out of place upper-class English accent for significant parts of the audiobook. However it is let down by some of the writing and the obviously inexperienced narrator, whose pacing is difficult at times. The strong point of this story is its excellent plot. Good story badly spoiled by the narration
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