The summary Amazon.com gives for Stasia Ward Kehoe's Audition: "When high school junior Sara wins a coveted scholarship to study ballet, she must sacrifice everything for her new life as a professional dancer-in-training. Living in a strange city with a host family, she's deeply lonely - until she falls into the arms of Remington, a choreographer in his early twenties. At first, she loves being Rem's muse, but as she discovers a surprising passion for writing, she begins to question whether she's chosen the right path. Is Rem using her, or is it the other way around? And is dancing still her dream, or does she need something more? This debut novel in verse is as intense and romantic as it is eloquent."
A condensed summary: "When Sara wins a scholarship and moves to study ballet, she meets Remington, a man much older than she is, and quickly falls into a complicated love that she must keep secret from her classmates and friends."
Or, even shorter: "Sara + Remington = sexsexsexsexsex."
Okay, so this last one is a little harsh. I admit it. Audition isn't only about sex between Sara and Remington, but that does show up a lot. It's more about ballet, and romance, and coming of age. And it's brilliant.
I love novels in verse. I really, really love them. I write them, I read them, and for a while I even thought in verse. (I'm not even kidding. Sometimes I'd catch myself trying to decide where to put line breaks in my thoughts.) So when I got Audition from the library, I was thrilled. But at first, I wasn't sure what to think. The writing style is a bit strange - I've never read a novel in verse where every line was capitalized until now, and it took a little while for me to get used to it - but ultimately, I was able to overcome that and appreciate the story for what it is. The beginning was also a bit slow and too easy to anticipate - of course Sara is a brilliant dancer, and of course she's going to win one of these scholarships. Maybe that's because you know this from the summary already. But it wasn't the beginning I was looking forward to, or what really made this book so amazing. It was the middle and the end and almost every aspect of Sara's relationship with Remington.
Their relationship is all too believable. It's so dynamic, and everything is so wonderfully described I literally felt I was there with Sara and Rem in almost every scene. It's so detailed, so amazing that I had a hard time putting it down. Which was a problem when I have to get up before 6 every morning for school and I stayed up until 11 or so reading this story.
I have to admit that there were a few flaws. As mentioned above, sex is a huge part of this story, and I'm grateful that Kehoe never goes into detail, just describes it enough to leave the reader with a good idea of what's happening. The problem is that after a while, this description starts to get a little old. There are several times where they're constantly doing it, as if there's nothing else in the world that matters. You definitely have to be comfortable with sex, and especially sex between two people of such different ages, to really be able to appreciate this book. It's also pretty obvious that Rem is a jerk and is just taking advantage of her, and I really did want to yell at Sara a few times for being so naïve, but hey - isn't this what happens in a lot of teen relationships?
That was the only major problem with their relationship. The only other flaw happened at the beginning, when Remington starts to meet Sara in secret (meaning, in his room) when he's still going out with another girl, Jane. Jane's nice but a bit too accepting when she realizes her boyfriend has been cheating on her with a much younger girl. No bitterness toward Sara? No heated arguments with Remington? I thought these could make the story a bit better, but maybe it would have ended up too long that way.
The final problem is because of me, not the book. I barely understood any of the ballet terms used. I knew what a pirouette was, and I learned about the barre in my 6-year-old ballet class, but that was about it. My one or two years of ballet weren't nearly enough to understand everything. I could have researched it, but I was too drawn into the story to stop and Google anything.
But of course, any book has mistakes, and these are actually pretty minor when you really think about it. I thought it was such a great book, covering coming-of-age and a relationship with a minor and an art form all in one fell swoop. Kehoe does a great job covering such a delicate subject about a sixteen-year-old and a twenty-something-year old falling in love, which couldn't have been done well by someone less skilled than such an amazing debut author. I really loved how their relationship played out, and I thought it was incredibly realistic and relatable. When Kehoe publishes a new story, I'll be first in line to read it. I love her writing style and her plots, and that's not just because I'm a sucker for novels in verse and relationships that would normally disgust other people. So even though there were a few problems, the good parts - the great parts, really - ultimately overwhelmed them, and that's why I give Audition by Stasia Ward Kehoe a 4 out of 5 star rating.
