Review: "Pas de Don't" by Chloe Angyal

 

Pas de Don't by Chloe Angyal
Published May 2023 via Amberjack Publishing
★★★★

When Heather takes a monthlong guest position at the Australian National Ballet, she's only seeking to escape the fallout from the end of her very public relationship with a fellow dancer—and to remind herself that her worth as a dancer isn't tied to her ex. What she doesn't expect is that a dancer at ANB will stir up feelings...or that they won't be able to act on those feelings without falling afoul of the company 'pas de don't' policy: no dating within the company, on penalty of job termination.

I read Angyal's Turning Pointe not too long ago, so I knew immediately when I saw this book that I'd be getting 1) a writer who knows ballet and 2) a writer who knows how poorly the ballet world treats so many, and who wants to see something better. The books aren't written for the same audience, exactly (there's overlap for sure—ahem—but the Venn diagram is not a circle), but Pas de Don't makes many of the same point(e)s, just in romance-novel form: that dancers, and woman dancers in particular, are trained to shut up and obey; that the major dance companies still disproportionately spotlight male choreographers; that men turn a blind eye when other men abuse power; that boys often get special treatment because dance schools are afraid they'll be scared off. (Let me be clear for the romance lovers—there is plenty of romance here, and plenty of, ah, pas de deux. There's just also a lot of smart context going on...and it's funny to boot.)

Angyal pulls some of her material directly from recent events in the ballet world—to avoid spoilers, I won't go into tutu much detail, but...well, this was one case where I thought I was going to be grumbling about the overuse of evil exes in romance, until it started to click that ohhh, there was a point(e) to the evil ex. (So props to Angyal for making me eat my words before I even had a chance to write them down.) There are some other things that I suspect she must have come across as a dancer herself ("stage face" was a new term for me), and I am quietly praying that she got the term "ex-future-mother-in-law" from the song "When It Rains It Pours," just because I would find that hilarious.

I try to be fairly targeted about the romance novels I read—sometimes I'm looking for mindless fluff, but sometimes I'm looking for something smart and up to date, and I'm delighted to have gotten the latter here. Definitely a genre pivot from Turning Pointe, but if Angyal can work within both these genres, I'm very curious about where she'll go next.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.