Tuesday 9 April 2013

In the Air (The City 1) by Crystal Serowka

Reviewed by Donna 4 stars



A great debut novel from Crystal Serowka!
 
Samson meets Natalia at the infamous doors of Juilliard, he comes across as cocky and arrogant and full of himself and Natalia immediately dismisses him, after she gets settled into her dorm room and attends her first ballet class, Natalia sees Samson again!

Samson was destined to go into the family business until his mother took him to a ballet when he was 15, he fell in love with the way the dancers poured out their emotions through dance, it was then he decided that he wanted to become a ballet dancer. He started taking lessons, his mother supported him, his father more or less disowned him.

Natalia, lost her father to cancer recently, they were really close. Her mother was a former ballerina herself but was not brilliant, she was therefore one of these pushy mums who pushed and pushed Natalia. Whilst Natalia actually loved the ballet she did not love her mums work ethic and Juilliard was her means to do something she loved whilst escaping her mum.

At their first ballet class Samson and Natalia are paired together and they make a fabulous dance partnership, Samson and Natalia both top of their game when it comes to ballet. Unbeknown to Natalia, the reason Samson made an ass of himself when he met her at the doors was he was tongue tied and taken aback by his instant connection to her, so he just made himself look stupid, at the end of the day he should not have had these thoughts as he already had a girlfriend that was attending Yale. Aubrey, not a nice person, too malleable by her parents and had started to put their dreams and wishes before her own, to the detriment of her relationship with Samson. They had been born around the same time, were childhood best friends and it was their destiny to be husband and wife..in my opinion this was more the destiny planned by the parents than Samson and Aubrey.

After getting to know Natalia, Samson realises that he is not in love with Aubrey and has feelings for Natalia. With Aubrey always on the phone arguing and becoming distant saying that Samson is doing everything he can to sabotage their relationship by following his dreams and going to Juilliard, Samson decides to end his relationship with Aubrey. This does not go down well! He starts a relationship with Natalia.

As usual in these books there would be no story without ups and downs and round and rounds which you will have to read about as I do not want to spoil it. But I will say that the characters were great, especially Natalia's room mate Kingsley, she had me in hysterics with her no nonsense attitude.

I really enjoyed this book and it was great for a debut book, loved it.