Review: "The Shadow Girls" by Nina Laurin

The Shadow Girls by Nina Laurin
Published April 2025 via Grand Central Publishing
★★★

Anna and Naomi are the top two students at their prestigious dance academy. Anna, with natural talent plus all the privileges that come with money and a mother who is a former ballerina herself, is expected to have her pick of company jobs when she graduates; Naomi has fire, but without the same advantages (either innate or based in privilege) she has always been second on the casting list, and she knows her pickings will be slimmer. But it's their last year, and neither girl—to say nothing of their mothers, or the teachers at the academy—is quite satisfied with the status quo.

I'm a sucker for a ballet book and no stranger to those fully of jealousy and intrigue, but this is a pretty grim read. The book switches between POVs, with a focus on Georgina (Anna's mother) and Naomi; Anna herself does not take center stage until very late in the book. And it's clear from the beginning that neither Georgina nor Naomi is a particularly pleasant person to spend time with: Georgina is a consummate stage mother, micromanaging her daughter's food (have to maintain that underweight ballet bod) and training (Georgina has ingratiated herself enough with the school to pull some significant strings) and friendships (Anna has very few of them, which is just the way Georgina likes it). She has a laser focus, and if it ever mattered what Anna wanted or what made Anna happy, well, it's been a long time since those things mattered. Naomi, meanwhile, is no better: though she's officially Anna's best friend, Naomi is definitely in it to keep her enemies closer. She's jealous and bitter and calculating from the get-go, convinced that Anna is the thing between herself and success and resenting her mother for having to work to keep Naomi in school fees and pointe shoes.

Other characters float in and out: Naomi's mother, who is briefly the only palatable character in the book but rapidly descends into the same unpleasantness that afflicts everyone else; the women running the academy, who really give no shits; the new artistic director, who in all of his considerable dialogue I don't think says a single thing that is polite, let alone kind; and on it goes. Anna is almost universally painted as a bit of a saint, but because we aren't in her POV until the end (and even then she's, you know, not really a saint), it's really just...bitterness and sex and drugs and lies and sleaziness and sabotage and venom. A lot of it involving fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds. Oh, and some improbable scenes involving the police. (I won't go into details, but the most realistic thing about it is that only a white girl with money and visibility would get an all-available-resources treatment when she's been missing for ten minutes and all signs point to her having left the house voluntarily.)

I didn't love the structure—the chapters flip back and forth through time, but (partly because just about everyone starts out at Bitch Level 10 and then stays there) I had trouble figuring out what was taking place when; it didn't matter all that much to my understanding of the book, but I'd probably have found a more linear plot easier to follow. And there's a lot of a character calling "a number" or finding something shocking or similar and then withholding that information from the reader until it's revealed later down the line. I tend to prefer books where the reader knows what the POV character knows; hiding that info from the reader always registers as a bit contrived.

So...a low three stars. Despite all of the above, this made for a very quick read, but...I was glad not to be in the characters' heads any longer. It'll be a good fit who like their characters messy and unlikable and their ballet drama with a side of broken glass in the pointe shoes, but I needed someone—anyone—to root for, and I never really could.

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