Leah Stephenson's life at the San Francisco Ballet Academy has been a dream. Finally she gets to spend part of every day working on her dancing! Not only that, but she is chosen to work with James - the school's rising star male dancer. The two of them work beautifully together, provoking jealousy from some of the Company members, and putting them in the lead spot for the coveted places dancing a pas de deux in school demonstrations. But when James pushes too hard and injures himself, both of the dancers' careers could be on the line.

I found this whole book fairly odd. First it seems a bit contrived that if the entire school is trying out for these few spots, most of the places go to Leah and her friends - first year students. And while I understood James' desire and determination to become the best dancer he possibly could even if it meant pushing himself and those around him to the brink of collapse, his personality was a puzzle to me. Was everything he did terribly manipulative to better the dancing? Why was he so scary and threatening? Not to mention, why was Leah so scared of him? It was a very strange dynamic and not as fun as most of the other books in this series.

The scenes describing the pas de deux are lovely - as always the dancing scenes are the best part of the book. But there are far too few of them in my opinion. And too much time devoted to everyone being terribly jealous of Leah. ( )