Sara’s always been a dancer, and it’s been her dream to pursue it more seriously. When she scores a scholarship to a prestigious dance academy in New Jersey, despite the hesitation she has about leaving behind her family and friends in Vermont, she knows this is the thing she needs to do to get ahead.

She packs her bags and is off to what she hopes will be her ticket to success, but Sara soon realizes that the change isn’t as easy as she’d wanted it to be. There’s not only the challenge of dancing hours upon hours each and every day — something that takes an immense physical toll on her — but there’s also the challenge of attending an academy where the curriculum is more difficult and more demanding than her school back in Vermont. More than that, though, she’s finding the social aspects of her new life to be difficult. And the boys at the Jersey Ballet? Well, they might be the biggest challenge for her. At least, one by the name of Remington is.

Even though Remington has a relationship with Jane, Sara can’t keep her eyes off him, and when they’re partnered for a performance, she finds that he really is magnetic. And single. It takes little time before the two of them are a couple but it takes even less time before Sara starts to question what her role in their romance is. Does he really love her or is he using her simply as his muse?

Audition is Stasia Ward Kehoe’s debut novel, and it’s written in verse. I think she nails the form so well in this book, as it’s not only well done, but it’s entirely suited to the story. Often, verse novels don’t delve deep enough into character or story and instead rely on the space between the words in the formatting to do a lot of the telling-that-can’t-be-said. In this case, though, there is plenty of character and story development, and it’s the verse which actually helps sustain and carry these things. We get a good voice in the novel, too, which is another tough aspect to nail in a verse novel.

Incidentally, this is the second book in the last year I’ve read dealing with ballet and the rough world of competitive and professional dancing (the first being Sophie Flack’s Bunheads). In both books, the main character develops a relationship with a boy that ultimately changes their thinking and the course of their future. But what I liked so much about reading these two books is the synergy between them. They aren’t the same story at all. Where Flack’s book focuses on what happens when a dancer questions what she’s lost by devoting everything to ballet, Kehoe’s book delves into what happens when a dancer finds herself through dancing, even if it’s not necessarily the way she wants to find herself.

Sara’s a quiet girl. She considers herself lucky, even though her friends and family (and the reader) know that to earn a scholarship to a dance academy takes a lot more than luck — she’s hard working, driven, and talented, but she’s less willing to give herself those sorts of labels. Sara’s humble. It’s not until she begins her relationship with Remington, though, that she discovers these very things about herself. Her relationship with Rem is steamy and almost exclusively so. Though they develop an emotional connection at the start of their romance, it becomes much more about their physical involvement than anything else. In the context of the story, though, this makes complete sense: these are two people who are in tune with their bodies on a level most people never are. The fact that their bodies become the centerpieces of their relationship is natural.

What didn’t quite work for me, though, was that despite this making sense, the story could have gained a little more from strengthening this physical relationship. What sets Sara off and makes her question Rem’s motives for being with her is that he borrows the way she moves her body to help choreograph other dancers. Yes, it’s sexual, but it’s actually a lot more about the sensuality than the sexuality; it’s in the way she stretches and moves, period, when they’re together that become fascinating to Rem. She becomes, as she says, his muse. The thing is, as readers, we don’t get to see enough of this happen between them, nor do we get a great sense of how she puts the pieces together. There’s a bit of a disconnect for readers, as Sara doesn’t let us inside her mind enough when she realizes that the way she stretches catlike with Remington is the same sequence of movements he then chooses to implement while training other dances. We’re told this. But we could have been shown just a little more.

In that sense, I didn’t feel like I got enough of Remington. I needed to know him a little more as a character and understand why he would do this. Where we’re immediately connecting with Sara in the story, Remington is more removed. We’re told about him through Sara, but we’re not told enough. He’s a figure a little too far away from our understanding, and thus, it doesn’t feel like a big deal when he’s using Sara as a muse. I wanted him to be a little more evil upfront to buy this. I completely understand Sara and her feelings, but I could have used just a bit more here.

Audition is well-paced and because of the verse, it reads quickly, despite being near 450 pages long. I could have done with a little bit of a shorter read, which could have aided in defining Remington more; conversely, I could have probably read another 50 pages if he were developed a little bit more. The ending of the book wasn’t a surprise for me, perhaps because I had read Bunheads, and I have to say that I was impressed that this book, as well as Flack’s, managed to keep the stereotyping of body image issues in the dance world to a minimum. That’s not to say it’s not in the book because it certainly is, but it’s not an issue with which Sara struggles, and I applaud Kehoe for that. It makes the story more authentic.

Hand this book off to fans of verse novels, as well as those who love a good story about the arts. Those who like stories about non-traditional high schoolers will appreciate the fact it’s set in a ballet academy, and those who read and devoured Flack’s Bunheads will definitely want to pick this one up.