Review: "Starting from Here" by Paula Sanders

Starting from Here by Paula Sanders
Published August 2025 via Random House
★★★

René dreams of dancing—but 1970s South Dakota is nobody's first thought when it comes to ballet. And so René finds herself living with strangers in Arizona, in Colorado, in a precarious existence designed to somehow get her to a place her family can't really understand.

This is a fairly quiet story, designed to peel away whatever glamorous veneer the reader has attached to ballet and show the grit—the unsophisticated grind—behind it. René's parents support her dancing, but they also resent the financial burden; her mother, in particular, seems to resent that René has opportunities that she was never afforded. What she doesn't see is the cost those opportunities carry for René, who understands early on that hers will be a lonely journey and one with precious little comfort.

I read this as a standalone book, but after finishing I looked up the author and saw that her previous book features the same characters, just younger; I wonder now whether this is best read as part of a family saga. (In the context of a first book, and based on where this book ends, it would not surprise me if there were to be a third book in the future, following René's early days in...well, her next adventures. I wonder, too, how autobiographical these books are meant to be (not that it matters, of course, but I'm afraid I'm perpetually—even terminally—curious).

One of the two things that interest me most is the understated nature of René's experiences. Or—I'm not sure "understated" is the right word. Rather, she has some dramatic moments and lands in some dangerous situations, but they're just part of her broader experience rather than single defining moments of the book. It makes for a very coming-of-age feeling for the book but also leaves some things feeling a bit unresolved. (Again, I wonder whether this book is best read in tandem with The Distance Home.)

The second thing that interests me is the focus on...I'm not sure how to put this. The focus on someone who isn't "making it" in the traditional sense but who is striving towards her dreams nonetheless, I suppose. René wants to dance in New York—she doesn't know the ballet world well enough to be more specific than that—but she's from a working-class South Dakota family; this is not a story of a girl studying at top-tier studios or elite academies, and it's not a story of a girl who is going to be scouted and catapulted into success. She also doesn't have laser focus; she's a teenager who gets distracted and somtimes makes questionable decisions. It's an everygirl story, the sort that is more realistic and more common but seems less told in fiction.

One for a day when you want something quiet and low-drama.

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