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UNLOVELY
by Celeste Conway
Merit Press, January 2015
252 pages
$17.99
ISBN: 1440582793


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

UNLOVELY, the chilling new young adult thriller by Celeste Conway, takes place in an idyllic New England seaside town. As the novel opens, college-freshman Harley Jamison watches a group of otherworldly young ballerinas who have returned to Oceanside Academy, the exclusive yearly ballet school on the hill. Harley is back in town for the summer, living on a boat with his widowed father Liam. He is mesmerized by the ballet girls, and begins an affair with an especially ethereal one named Cassandra.

But there are problems with the dancers and their conservatory. On a very basic level, they represent money and privilege, a contrast to the simple, blue-collar world of the townsfolk. But there is also something mysterious and possibly dangerous about the ballerinas and their school. Liam bears a scar on his neck from the attack of a ballet teacher that he was involved with and warns his son to stay away from the place. There are rumors that the death of a young town man a few years earlier was suspicious and not a suicide as had been asserted. Harley manages to rescue Julian, one of the male ballet students, who was somehow locked in the basement and almost died. Then Julian's ankle injury oddly does not heal. Because of the prevalence of vampires in current YA fiction, the reader may wonder if there is a supernatural element to the tale.

Cassandra harbors a secret sorrow concerning her last boyfriend, and Harley does not know what happened to cause her such great pain. She looks at Harley as her protector, but then becomes less and less available as she is cast as the lead in Giselle. Conway does an excellent job of describing the essence of this ballet and also relating it to the horrors of what is going on with Cassandra and the other dancers. It is a ballet about ghosts and revenge, perfect topics for this book, and her descriptions of the characters and scenes are told clearly through a young person's eyes.

Then Harley discovers that the ballerinas have ritual meetings where they share their secrets about the betrayals of the opposite sex. Before the book is finished, someone else dies under unclear circumstances, possibly involving the group of dancers, and Harley himself is placed in grave jeopardy.

As a young adult book, the tale is aimed at the 16-25 year old reader. It focuses on characters in this age group and many of the particulars are taken from their world. A reader of any age may become engaged in the well-written suspense of the story, although hickeys, cheerleaders, boyfriend and girlfriend problems do figure. Since this is a modern story, sex is not a forbidden topic, but neither is it described in any detail. Harley's ex-girlfriend Mairin is pregnant. She is in an abusive relationship with someone she became involved with on the rebound from Harley. She haunts Harley, and even though he becomes enamored of Cassandra, he cannot stop thinking about her.

This is perhaps a stand-alone novel, but the ending that Conway has created leaves the reader with a feeling of dread. UNLOVELY has come to an end, but the dancers and their plots are still out there. Can Harley prevail? We hope the author will write a sequel with these characters and answer that question.

§Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.

Reviewed by Anne Corey, February 2015

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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