A bold and emotionally gripping novel about a teenage Latinx girl finding freedom through dance and breaking expectations in 1980s Minnesota. When sixteen-year-old Rosa Dominguez pirouettes, she is poetry in pointe shoes. And as the daughter of a tyrant ballet Master, Rosa seems destined to become the star principal dancer of her studio. But Rosa would do anything for one hour in the dance studio upstairs where Prince, the Purple One himself, is in the house. After her father announces their upcoming auditions for a concert with Prince, Rosa is more determined than ever to succeed. Then Nikki--the cross-dressing, funky boy who works in the dance shop--leaps into her life. Weighed down by family expectations, Rosa is at a crossroads, desperate to escape so she can show everyone what she can do when freed of her pointe shoes. Now is her chance to break away from a life in tulle, grooving to that unmistakable Minneapolis sound reverberating through every bone in her body.
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I was excited to read this bc I love Center Stage and am forever chasing YA novels to give me that high. ([b:Tiny Pretty Things 18710209 Tiny Pretty Things (Tiny Pretty Things, #1) Sona Charaipotra https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1413576484l/18710209.SX50.jpg 26568298] so far was the closest.)This book for me though....was not it.I think there are aspects to like here–I think the Prince-centric 80s Minnesota setting is cool, I think the queer teen drag scene is cool, I think it's cool to highlight the talents & struggles of dancers of color. But the plot itself was SO SWEATY, and not just because of all the hard dance practices. (Rim shot) It just felt like I could realllly see the seams where the author wanted X emotional effect and therefore Y had to happen and therefor character had to do Z thing even though Z thing didn't really make sense. Like for example early on we see that Rosa's sister is a paraplegic and it's clear that Rosa is hiding something about that (even though it's her own narration which is already kind of a shaky narrative device in the first place, of like why the narrator is clearly hiding something from....herself?) But the reveal that her sister is disabled because she and Rosa were fighting at home inside the house and then Rosa got mad, took her sister's shoe out of her hand, went outside and threw the shoe into the street, and then her sister chased the shoe into the road and got hit by a truck??? whaaaat?!?! SO SWEATY, rly feels like the author could have taken another whack at that and come up with some less bonkers reason why Rosa might feel guilt about her sister's injury IMO!!!!Anyway I'm leaving out a star rating because there aren't so many reviews of this up yet and I don't want this responsibility but I did not really like this book and I kept incredulously telling improbable details aloud to my coworker. If this were a Disney Channel movie I'd definitely watch it but the problem is dance movies can get by on super thin plots/character developments because it's nice to watch dance performances but dance BOOKS have a higher bar to clear and IMO this one did not do that!!
