Book Review: Dancergirl by Carol M. Tanzman

EVER FEEL LIKE SOMEONE’S WATCHING YOU? ME TOO. BUT LATELY IT’S BEEN HAPPENING IN MY ROOM. WHEN I’M ALONE.

A friend posted a video of me dancing online, and now I’m no longer Alicia Ruffino. I’m dancergirl. And suddenly it’s like me against the world—everyone’s got opinions. My admirers want more, the haters hate, my best friend Jacy—even he’s acting weird. And some stalker isn’t content to just watch anymore.

Ali. dancergirl. Whatever you know me as, however you’ve seen me online, I’ve trained my whole life to be the best dancer I can be. But if someone watching has their way, I could lose way more than just my love of dancing. I could lose my life.

My thoughts:
My first thought while reading dancergirl was that the author must have been a dancer herself at some point. She has completely nailed that feeling you get when doing something, be it dancing, writing or snowboarding, that just makes you feel more like you. Even in the midst of her paranoia Ali manages to lose herself completely to the dance, and as the reader I could feel her excitement and joy.

Ali is a very believable character. At first she relishes the attention that comes with being known as dancergirl, having previously been the kind of girl nobody really noticed at school, but she soon sees that being a viral star has its bad sides too. When she starts feeling like someone is watching her, both in public and in her own bedroom, every one of her (male) friends become suspects, and even if I had a gut feeling I didn't know for sure who it was until it was revealed.

Dancergirl brings up some important themes, but aside from the obvious "don't post anything online that you don't want the whole world to see", I really liked seeing Ali deal with other people's opinions of her. We are all so much more than whatever small pieces of ourselves we choose to share with the public, and it is important to remember that this is true about everyone around us too. There were a couple of paragraphs where I thought the moral of the story came off a little too preachy for me, but all in all Dancergirl is an exciting story that I really enjoyed.

Cover:
It definitely has that online/internet-vibe to it, but it's not the most exciting cover.

My rating of this book:

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Full disclosure:
Review copy from Netgalley

This book can be purchased from a number of local retailers and online book stores like Amazon and The Book Depository (I'm not an affiliate of either). The latter store has free shipping to about 100 countries.