ALA Booklist

Harley Jamison, home from his first year away at college, is trying to forget maybe forgive s first love, Máirín, who has given up her life's plans at her mother's behest. Meanwhile, he is enticed by a ballerina at the local dance school, where strange things happen, and he quickly becomes obsessed and nearly forgets about his own plans. Are the strange happenings at the Ocean Watch School because of a haunted mystery or because of the delicate and strong-willed dancers there? Can Harley free himself from the thrall that threatens everything he loves? Or is he doomed to suffer like his father did, eventually dying at the hands of a brokenhearted ballet dancer? A slow starter, Conway's newest has writing that rides the line between awkward and beautiful, with lines like "she had set her sights on the quickest route to the deepest fall." Harley's experiences hit on the unsettling feeling of returning to a hometown that is at times both strange and familiar, which characterizes many new adult novels, with the extra peril of a long-standing mystery added in.

Horn Book (Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 CDT 2015)

Recently heartbroken college freshman Harley has begun dating Cassandra, a student at the renowned local ballet school. He's heard rumors about the ballerinas but dismisses them as townie animosity--until some uncomfortable encounters with Cassandra's creepy colleagues. This eerie story is an awkward melding of ballet novel with horror that will appeal to only a small niche of readers.

School Library Journal (Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 CST 2014)

Gr 9 Up-Harley Jamison has returned to his island home after his first year of university, not expecting to feel as much of a stranger as he does. His former girlfriend Mair&7;n (with whom it was assumed Harley would spend the rest of his life) has a new guy, is pregnant, and doesn't seem happy. In an attempt to convince himself that he's over her, Harley becomes involved with a student from the dance school nearby. Having grown up in the town, he's well aware that the residents view the dancers with a hostile suspicion, mostly due to the death of a local boy who was killed in a fall from one of the school's upper-story windows, but Cassandra is charming and very beautiful. When Cassandra is cast in the lead role of Giselle , she changes, becoming unpredictable and eerily mimicking the behavior of the ballet's doomed heroine. Scenes in which she lures Harley to the school's grounds late at night have an aura of dangerous unreality, but rather than being drawn into the suspense, readers are merely observers. An additional purchase for librarians looking to beef up their YA thriller collections. Marlyn Beebe, Long Beach Public Library, Los Alamitos, CA