Until We Break

Volume XXIX / Issue 6 - October 7 / 2022
Waking Romeo
Waking Romeo
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Until We Break

Author: 
Matthew Dawkins
Toronto, ON: Wattpad Books, 2022
319 pp., trade pbk. & hc., $14.99 (pbk.), $24.99 (hc.)
ISBN: 
9781989365878 (pbk.)
9781990259692 (hc.)
Grades: 
Grades 10 and up
Ages: 
Ages 15 and up
Review by: 
Sarah Wethered (Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy)
3
Excerpt: 

Everything breaks – that’s what the metal barre is for at the Riverside Dance Academy. Young dancers new to pointe shoes and rubbing Tiger Balm onto their ankles, at first, use the barre to help keep their balance. But after a few years, when they’ve broken enough pointe shoes and their bodies have begun to ache, they realize that bones break far too easily and these horizontal waist-high metallic barres drilled into either wall of the dance studio are really here because dancers often need something to squeeze.

However, on a stage where they need it most, there are no barres. There is only the open floor.

The entire Riverside Dance Academy was holding on to the barre now. For the past four minutes they had been lined off in a unmoving, low plie. Their bodies were still as concrete – hushed. The only sound was that of Valentino’s quick, bare-footed pacing across the marbly floor. It was his instruction that was keeping them there. Punishment, he called it, after hours of abysmal dancing.

Naomi supposed punishment was the right word. Her legs were burning now, and her outstretched arm felt more and more like it was just begging for permission to go limp. But she also knew that from the pain, she would emerge a much better dancer. The agony of what a proper low plie felt like would be scared into her muscle memory and she would be that much closer to perfection next time.

Naomi Morgan is a dedicated ballet dancer who has had a traumatic last few months. Her best friend, Jessica, died in a tragic automobile accident, and Naomi tries to cope with this loss by regimenting the rest of her life. She trains more than eight hours a day and restricts her food intake to get that perfect ballerina form. Naomi is spurred on by the hallucinations she has of Jessica, who constantly criticizes her for any imperfection or slip. Because of this, Naomi overtrains and injures herself, meaning she cannot rehearse for the most important audition of her life – a chance for a scholarship at a very prestigious ballet school. While Naomi is unable to dance, she strikes up an unlikely friendship with Saint, a young street artist who has lost his mom and is taking care of his sick father and his younger brother. This friendship blossoms over the course of Naomi’s rehabilitation and changes both protagonists for the better.

Readers of Until We Break are taken into the world of both high-level ballet and street artists. Readers will want to know if Naomi will be able to dance again and whether she gets the ballet scholarship she really wants. Further, readers will be drawn into knowing whether Saint’s father’s illness gets worse. There is equal time in the story given to Naomi, Saint, and their time together, and the use of alternating narrators helps move the story along.

I recommend Until We Break to fans of realistic fictions or readers who may be involved in the dance or art scene. As both Naomi and Saint are black, teenagers of colour may see parts of their own lives reflected in the characters. The friendship between Naomi and Saint brings out the best in both young people, and I really liked that the author did not get tempted to write a romance between the two.

Recommended
Reviewer: 

Sarah Wethered has been a teacher-librarian at New Westminster Secondary School for 22 years, and she currently lives in New Westminster, British Columbia.