I can tell you have passion,” he said easily, clearly unaware of—or undeterred by—the turmoil of reactivity thirteen inches away from him. “I watched you for only a little while up there, not even alone, and I know you can be much better than you are. Even better, I should say.” What?” Then I remember that I had laughed out loud. Like a crazy person. “Oh, that. No. Nothing is funny.” He gets up, and for a moment I feel a plunge of regret that I didn’t say anything interesting and instead sat here dumbly. But then he moves to the seat directly beside me. JFK Allegedly Never Consummated His Relationship With This Controversial Actress Despite Months ofDating We are in such similar careers, to keep it separate is better. You’re working with the person all day, and then you’re with them at night. It’s like, too much.”

First Position - Kindle edition by Hamrick, Melanie First Position - Kindle edition by Hamrick, Melanie

falling out in a hissed bravado before I can catch them. “I have to be in my head! If I’m not, then my form falls apart. Or it would. I have to be on the stage, in the music, and I have to be thinking in my head. Of course I do.” She also captures the anticipation of being in the wings, the “pulsing, organic high that will buzz through my veins” once she gets out on stage. And the specifics of dancing at the highest level, of dedicating your youth to excelling in a specific pursuit, only to make it and then find yourself lost among a dozen other identically talented little swans. She talks of keeping quiet and fitting in to get to the top, then finding that audiences want star dancers with strong personalities; of the tension between being a dancer of exactitude and precision but also one of instinct and drama. I can smell him. Is it cologne or just him? The notes are clean, maybe a little woodsy or smoky but not aggressively so. It could be soap and body heat.I also loved the theme of friendship and how redemption can be found in your love for others. I could see that in her relationship with Jocelyn and Alessandro. By building them up, she inevitably finds the courage to be the dancer she was always supposed to be. There are often more rivalries than friendships in art as competitive as ballet, so when you find these true friends – it's essential to hold on to them and treat them like the unique jewel they are. Sylvie came across as highly unlikeable and selfish. I understand the issues that she had, but the way she treated people throughout the story just rubbed me the wrong way. I thought surely there would be some sort of growth in her, or the author would try to redeem her, but that didn’t happen. She was the same old Sylvie until the very end when I am supposed to root for her because she decides to stop drinking and treating everyone badly. I’m surviving instead of breathing. I’m waiting for something, but what would it take for me to live again?’ For some reason, my default is to defend her shit as reasonable. “It’s rehearsal—she’s got to be hard on us.” Well, I don’t know—how am I supposed to read that? In my head? Whose head should I be in?” He doesn’t answer before I rail on. “Maybe it’s just that she hates me, and it’s really that simple.”

First Position by Melanie Hamrick: 9780593638149

All I can say is that I really enjoyed it. I listened to it in one day. The narration was done really well. I loved both narrators. One was vulnerable, one was bitchy and ambitious. I loved it. Jocelyn’s POV was mainly in the past. Sylvie, we get past and present. While the characters were fascinating, they author could have gone even deeper, especially when it comes to how to resolve the ending. And though there are a LOT of super cringey sex scenes, the intriguing friendship and rivalry between the two protagonists is more than enough to make up for it in terms of plot. There are two voices inside of me. One of them is the truth-teller. The one who sees things how they are and tells me, whether I like it or not, what I cannot admit to myself. The other is the liar. The one who acts on fear and anxiety. The one that tells me to stay scared because I will fail and who tells me not to take a risk because I’ll fall. They speak the same language but seem to have an almost imperceptibly different dialect. It makes it hard to tell which is speaking.” The pacing was slow and dragging, but the conclusion was well crafted. Nevertheless, I still had a hard time getting into the main story and connecting with any of the characters, which is why I decided to give a flat, uneventful, solid three stars. I wish I had enjoyed the book more than its alluring cover!

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Heather couldn’t help but notice it was a very nice ass … even by ballet standards, sitting high and round above hamstrings so defined they looked like bridge cables under his tanned skin. Whoever this guy turned out to be, she’d never be able to forget that under those sweatpants he had a perfectly sculpted butt.” I don’t know what I want anymore, and I used to know exactly what I wanted. I know that I did. Somewhere along the way that changed. And I know exactly when.’ L’Wren took her own life less than a month later, reportedly because of debts and business difficulties.