My review of Bunheads

Bunheads by Sophie Flack
Release Date: March 1, 2012
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 As a dancer with the Manhattan Ballet Company, nineteen-year-old Hannah Ward is living her childhood dream. She gets to be up on stage in front of adoring crowds every night. And while she might not be a prima ballerina yet, she's moving up the ranks and surely if she works hard enough she can make it happen.

But devoting her whole life to ballet leaves very little time for anything else: friends, family, school have all fallen by the wayside. Hannah doesn't mind, until a chance encounter in a restaurant brings Jacob into her life. He's cute, he plays guitar and he's offering a whole future that Hannah never considered. And now she must choose between her lifelong dream or what could be the love of her life...

When I picked up Bunheads, I expected some kind of epic romance with a girl on the verge of self discovery at a ballet school. But no, I ended up with a book crammed with boring drama and lifeless characters. 

Hannah Ward is a ballet dancer, her one wish is to become a ballerina and have a solo on a stage that she loves. But working so hard leaves no time for a social life outside of the ballet world. When she meets Jacob, she begins to doubt her dreams and wonders what having a normal life would be like. She has to make the biggest decision of all, work towards her dream or go along with the boy who could be the love of her life.

Sounds quite good, doesn't it? Well, it isn't. The main character, Hannah, has the dream to be a ballerina, she wants to be a soloist and when one of her friends is picked to be a soloist and Hannah was upset, I didn't care. I thought: Damn, how could this get more boring? 

I know the book is about ballet and I shouldn't have picked it up if I wasn't prepared to read about it but I was really interested in Jake, the love interest. I thought he would make the book more exciting, make HANNAH more exciting. He was great, I guess, I skim read many pages to read about him and wondered why he would ever waste his time on someone as whinny and as hurtful as Hannah. Why, why, WHY? He's in college and he sounds like a handsome guy, so why is he with Hannah? It just didn't make any sense. Whenever Hannah lashed out at Jake, I couldn't understand why he kept giving her chances. 

As for Hannah? I didn't like her. She had a horrible personality: whinny, weak, annoying, you get the picture. I didn't care whether she got the main part in this ballet show or not. The author did nothing to make me like the character.

This book was a HUGE disappointment. I can understand why some people might enjoy Bunheads; if you like ballet and lots of drama, then yes, I think this one is for you but it definitely wasn't for me. 

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