Review: "Dancing with a Demon" by Valerie Foster

Dancing with a Demon by Valerie Foster
Published July 2026 via Black Rose Writing
★★★

Foster's daughter Jenna seemed to be sailing along—until she stopped eating, and things got hard, fast. Suddenly conversations turned from college decisions to residential treatment programs, and everything about the future became uncertain.

Dancing with a Demon was first published in 2017, though even then it had been some years since Jenna's illness. This is helpful in terms of the telling of the story; though Foster clearly still remembers the fear and anguish of that time period, and remembers it viscerally, she also has enough distance to take a step back and look at the broader picture. (There are also excerpts from Jenna's own journals; previous editions of the book credit Jenna as a cowriter.) I do wish that this updated edition had removed weights from the book, as there are other ways to convey the seriousness of illness without including details that will be harmful to some readers.

Overall, though, there are some excellent points, including the very real limits to conversations with other parents in Foster's position and the inadequacy of many treatment programs. This thousand-dollar-a-day program was all about weight, and with our insurance covering it only on a week-by-week appeal, in-house treatment was very regimented. They could not keep a patient once he or she reached a certain number on the scale, whatever they determined as a reasonable weight for maintaining life, regardless of any real progress, mentally or emotionally. (loc. 659*) This is not an exception—insurance so often dictates what treatment somebody will get, as very few could afford that kind of out-of-pocket cost. Can you imagine the same thing for cancer? "Well, radiation has shrunk the tumor to a manageable size, so we're not covering surgery or chemotherapy, even though the tumor will almost certainly regrow without them."

A good addition to something of a sub-sub-genre.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

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