Review: "Toe to Toe" by Falon Ballard

Toe to Toe by Falon Ballard
Published March 2026 via G.P. Putnam's Sons
★★

You know the story: ballerina is excellent at ballerina-ing, but she's told that she's not sexy enough for a sexpot role, so she hires a stripper to teach her to bring more sensuality to her performance. Sparks fly, yadda yadda.

And...I'm underwhelmed. I picked this up for the ballet element, and honestly, I didn't realize from the description that this was a ballet-dancer-meets-stripper story—Cord is described instead as the lead dancer of an all-male revue, Cord Donovan, a classically trained dancer who is also the sexiest man she’s ever met. All of that's true! And there's nothing wrong with stripping, and I'm aware that in addition to stripping, Cord is doing a bunch of other things (successful business owner, etc.). But...if I had a cliche-o-meter, this book might have broken it.

The book is genuinely trying to do some interesting things, but a lot of them...left me wanting more, I guess. Let's go through a few.

Diversity: There's an effort at having a varied cast (mostly by way of race, gender, and sexuality), which is great. The book does lose points there by doing one of my pet peeves and having Allegra immediately and accurately identify women as women, men as men, and nonbinary people as "people".

Disordered eating: The author's note at the beginning says that while [Allegra] does not suffer from any diagnosed eating disorder, she is very aware of her eating habits and those behaviors are present on the page (loc. 224). The forewarning is appreciated, and the book is careful not to get into weight or body-checking or calories. At the same time...I find the language of the note strange; not having a diagnosed eating disorder is not the same as not having an eating disorder. If Allegra were in a slightly different context, her approach to eating (terrified of everything but salads, basically) and exercise (must do class + additional workout daily without fail) would raise big red eating disorder flags to those around her. Cole sees it all, and he vacillates between presenting Allegra with food he knows she won't eat and telling her that it's fine, athletes gonna athlete and part of that is engaging in restrictive food habits. And...eesh. Obviously it's true that ballet is a very visual form, and many if not most ballerinas performing at a high level are thin in a way that is unlikely to be something they never think about, but...I'd have preferred this side plot to be either 1) deleted or 2) explored in a great deal more depth.

Sexual harassment: One thread that runs through the book has to do with, well, sexual harassment in the ballet world. Allegra has previously rejected the advances of her ballet director, but among other things, he continues to insinuate that she'll have a higher chance of promotion to principal if she sleeps with him. While Allegra is careful to keep her distance, she is also very, very clear that this is a level of harassment she expects and is willing to tolerate for the sake of continuing in her career. And...what do we do with that? On the one hand, it makes Allegra look like a bit of a doormat, and one who isn't thinking beyond herself—she never stops to consider that if the director is harassing her, there's a good chance he's also harassing other dancers, ones who are more afraid to say no. Never. Not once. And on the other hand, she's in a position that many, many, many woman, in all sorts of careers and jobs, find themselves. Allegra is milquetoast as all get-out, but her decision to tolerate a certain level of sexual harassment is not a surprising one.

What I did want from her, though, was consideration of other options. Allegra is afraid that if she speaks up, she'll be blacklisted and never dance for a reputable company again, and I don't know—maybe that's still true. She's also, as a soloist, still more replaceable than, e.g., a principal dancer who regularly headlines roles. But even if making a formal complaint would torpedo her life, she has other options. She could make an anonymous complaint. She could audition with other dance companies—e.g., ones with directors who aren't withholding promotion because she's refused to sleep with them. She could get a sense of other dancers' experiences with the director and see how much of a pattern this is, see if this is something they could report en masse or if someone less replaceable would back her. She could consider...oh, gosh, I don't even know what else she could consider. But neither does she, because she never tries to consider alternatives.

I can't fault her for not wanting to torpedo her life. I can't. It's not her fault that the director is a slimy slimy sleazeball, and it's not actually her job to fix that. But I still wish she'd do...something.

The ballet: Ballet in this ballet-centric book is nearly nonexistent, unfortunately. Allegra goes to class occasionally (or rather, she goes to class once and sometimes twice daily, but we see it occasionally), and she performs occasionally (ditto), but we see almost none of the details. The ballet she enlists Cord to help her audition for is one choreographed by the slimy skeevy director, and when he describes it at the beginning all of the dancers basically roll their eyes and say "this sounds like a derivative mess that is actually just "Moulin Rouge"", but then their objections fade away into nothing and Allegra treats it as the thing that will put her on the map (or at least lead to her promotion). I suspect this is because "Allegra gets her moment to shine" was a bigger plot priority than "skeevy director isn't even good at his job", but, I dunno. It ended up feeling a little "evil villain is evil". There can be ballets that require sensuality without them being "Moulin Rouge" knock-offs, you know? (But then, maybe it's not even a knock-off, because we see nothing of the audition and next to nothing of the rehearsals and nothing of the performance itself, so.)

Existing in the age of the Internet: As "payment" for her lessons with Cord, Allegra agrees to help him choreograph a duet for his strip club, and then to perform it. I'm not here to take issue with that! Not with his job, and not with her trying out a different kind of stage. What I am here to take issue with is the idea that at no point does either of them consider that they're living in an age of smartphones and social media, that she has a job that makes her more visible than some, and that there is an excellent chance that her experimentation with stripping might become very public. I could get her assessing the risk and deciding it manageable; I could get her saying "no, this is not a risk that I am willing to take". But it being a risk that neither of them ever considers is just...I'm trying to be polite here. It's not smart.

In sum: I wanted to like this, because I like ballet books and I appreciated that the author was trying to bring some shades of grey into situations that can be quite complicated. But the execution just didn't do it for me.