Review: "Making the Cut" by Sophie Wiggins

Making the Cut by Sophie Wiggins
Published July 2025 via The Book Guild
★★

The moment Lydia's daughter Annie sets foot in a ballet class, she's hooked—and Lydia knows she'll do anything in her power to keep Annie happy and dancing.

Content warnings in a footnote because they're somewhat spoilery*

What worked well for me:
I love a ballet book, so I was eager to pick this one up. It's interesting to get a small peek into competitive dance, too—Annie eventually wants to dance professionally, but a lot of her classes end up being about other types of dance, like acro, and about preparing for competitions. And...to an extent I appreciate that Lydia is making calculated decisions throughout the book: she's constantly weighing her reservations about the ballet studio against Annie's happiness, and everything she does is in pursuit of that happiness. She's very much a dance mom, and she may have lost touch with what is healthy, but what she does not do is push Annie to do anything she doesn't want to.

What worked less well for me:
First, the stress about money is real in this book, from almost the very beginning. Lydia throws financial caution to the wind in pursuit of Annie's dance education. Aside from wishing the studio's vulture aspect had been more gradually introduced, I just find reading that kind of financial imprudence really stressful to read about. Personal preference, but it honestly stressed me out to read about it.

Second, although Lydia does try not to be that kind of dance mom...in her head, she's every bit as bad as the others. The word "bitch" appeared at least 19 times, and almost every one of those instances is in Lydia's thoughts—mostly referring to either the other dance moms or to their daughters, whether the daughter is 7 or 17. It's not great. The main portion of the book spans about fifteen years, from when Annie is two to when she's a teenager, but Lydia never really grows; she neither has nor wants any kind of life outside Annie's dance. It never occurs to her that there is any kind of middle ground; e.g., that she could look for a different studio for her daughter. And...although she says she does everything for her daughter, she's incredibly passive, to the point that when her daughter faces something that Lydia knows from personal experience can be deadly, she continues to do nothing...and then eventually blames the studio for not telling her their suspicions sooner, even though she'd known about (and done nothing) for months as well. Maybe some of this is supposed to be explained by Lydia's past, but I wanted her to take some kind of normal step to set them on a different path, and she never did.

And third—this is the biggest point—I think the book has been mismarketed. At the time that I picked it up, it was labelled "entertainment & pop culture," "general fiction (adult)," and "women's fiction." And...to an extent that's true. But there are periodically chapters set in Lydia's own teenaged years, and in the middle of the book, things take a very dark, violent, and graphic turn. Once we're in there, the book refuses to back off, going in directions that take this to...well, a genre that is way more violent and graphic than I'd expect from something labelled "entertainment & pop culture" and "women's fiction." Then again, if this had been a thriller, I'd have gone in a bit more prepared...but I'd still have been unpleasantly surprised by some of the violence here.

I imagine this one will find its readers, but it was not for me. I wish I'd had a better idea, going in, of what to expect; this took my expectations and bashed them against the wall until they were bruised and bloody.

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

*Content warnings: eating disorder; graphic depictions of multiple-assailant sexual assault; graphic depiction of nonsexual violence