B+
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Novella, Romance
Theme: Age Difference
Archetype: Athlete, Diverse Protagonists
This is an introductory novella to a series about women who all attended the MacLaine Performing Arts Academy in Washington D.C., and I’ll admit, I would have bought the novella on the strength of the cover alone.
Isn’t it gorgeous?
Bina MacLaine is the daughter of the founder of the Academy, and now that she’s an adult, she teaches dance there and manages a lot of the operations. She’s a year off a traumatically broken engagement, and she still has some anger towards her former fiance (proven by dumping an iced coffee on his head when he makes an insulting offer to buy the Academy).
Look, if I can make it so that I read at least one book a month where the heroine dumps iced coffee (or tea, I’m not particular) on a dingbat’s head, it will be a year well-read.
Anyway, her mother brings in a new teacher to help bring up enrollment, and it’s the now grown-up Maurice, who took dance classes there when he was a kid, and is now a fine looking man. He and Bina immediately have sparks, which she denies as hard as she can, because she is technically his employer, and he is ten years younger, and he was a student of hers.
There are things that could have gone wrong that did not. A former teacher-student dynamic could be quite dicey, but it worked for me here. After thinking about it, I think there are two reasons why it did. First is that there were a good several years between when he was in her class and when he came back to DC. The second is that there was never any hint that either one of them (but especially Bina) had any serious attraction when Maurice was a child. This is deeply important to me.
One of the other things that I liked about the novella (and the set up for the series) is that the issue of gentrification is one of the driving forces in the plot. The Academy is losing students because rising rents and housing prices are driving them away, and Bina’s mother, Yvonne, doesn’t want to raise tuition because that would price out the students she wants to serve. This is a real issue for a lot of cities, but the specificity of DC is a good touch.
Between the heroines of the series, they’re determined to save the Academy from the slow death of gentrification.
I also loved the author’s voice, especially her skill with using dialogue to reveal character distinctions. She writes marvelous subtle (and not so subtle) differences in Black men talking to Black women, and men talking to men, and women talking to women. Bina and Maurice are especially adorable and they have lots of smoking hot sex that Bina absolutely deserves. Since it’s a novella, there’s not a lot of time for a complex plot (a single Misunderstanding that’s cleared up by an Actual Conversation).
This novella sets up the series nicely, and I’m really excited to see how Bina and her friends save what is, essentially, their childhood home. I’m mildly annoyed I can’t preorder the next book already.
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On a random note, “When Dimple Met Rishi” also features a heroine throwing her drink on someone, though he ends up not being a jerk. (Turns out walking up to someone and addressing her as your future wife isn’t cool…especially if she’s not aware your parents decided you should get married.)
I’m thrilled to see another book featuring a couple who are both dancers! This is definitely one I want to read. More, please!
YES FOR THE COVER. And of course, for Black women, Black dancers, gentrification as a real Thing That Happens in fiction, and all the goods. I’m in, I’m in, I’m in.
This sounds SO GOOD and an absolute YES to that cover. Yes, yes, yes!
The cover is amazing, glad to hear the story is solid! Looking forward to reading this.
I one-clicked that baby. Was strongly tempted recently by a rec for a ballroom romance, but in this one I have the feeling I will like the characters more.
One-clicked! Thank you. I’ve never read this author before.
Such a wonderful review. I have become used to reading cheerleading pieces with little merit, but your words renovated about the novel. Thank you!
I have just finished this book and found it curiously unsatisfying 🙁
I liked the set-up, and the coffee-over-a-crappy-ex, but I really felt there was too much story for too little book, it all felt a bit rushed to me, too much “three months later” tell rather than show.
And I thought the mum’s story made the heroine seem selfish, and thoughtless – HOW did she not notice?! Really, after a life together it seemed unbelievable that she wouldn’t…
I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it.
I read it over the weekend and also didn’t love it. The mother-daughter relationship seemed adversarial as well as unobservant. They had serious issues and had NOT ONE serious talk about them. People who run a business together need to talk. A lot. Like, daily. If the business founder is no-showing for any reason, the operations person – who has already made a scene about how shaky the business is – needs to be paying more attention to that than to the hottie down the hall. That level of head-in-the-clouds would pass at 18, not in a heroine over 30.
The romance angle was better, but there I found the writing a bit … clunky. There was a lot of telling, not showing, and the jealous ex back-story was just unnecessary. It was a level of conflict that the core story didn’t need.
I liked this but didn’t love it. I agree that the main character not seeing her mother’s problems made her seem pretty distant and self-centered; it felt like the author wanted it to work for the plot, but couldn’t really make it sympathetic.
OTOH, I usually hate anything close to teacher-student, and that speech was handled well.
I finished this novella yesterday. I enjoyed it. Bina and Mo both seemed to be a little self absorbed. I would have thought that Bina would have be more observant of what was going on with her mother, being that she was an only child. But, it left me wanting to read the next book.