Blog tour: The Sleeping Beauties

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Welcome to the blog tour for The Sleeping Beauties by Lucy Ashe!

More about the book…

May 1945 and at long last, Rosamund Caradon is feeling optimistic. As she returns the last few evacuees to London from her Devonshire manor, she vows to protect dance-obsessed daughter Jasmine from further peril.

But a chance meeting with a Sadler’s Wells ballet dancer changes everything.

When the beautiful, elusive Briar Woods bursts into Rosamund’s train carriage, it’s clear her sights are set on the immediately captivated Jasmine. And Rosamund cannot shake the eerie feeling this accidental encounter is not what it seems.

For Briar may be far away from the pointe shoes and greasepaint of the Sleeping Beauty ballet that is so much a part of her, but her performance for Rosamund might just be her most successful yet.

This, Briar feels, is a show for a mother and daughter. A dance that could turn deadly…

More about the author…

After training at the Royal Ballet School for eight years, Lucy Ashe decided to change career plans and go to university, where she read English Literature before becoming a teacher.

Her poetry and short stories have been published in a number of literary journals and she was shortlisted for the 2020 Impress Prize for New Writers. 

My impressions…

I am particularly intrigued by novels set during the Second World War and the years surrounding it. Combine this with a gorgeous cover, and I am jumping at the opportunity to read a book! And what a book this is!

Exploring themes of female friendship, family secrets, obsession and jealousy, the novel is told from the dual perspectives of Rosamund and Briar. Are they both what they appear to be? This question is answered as we are taken back and forth in time, building up the tension until – after a fair share of plot twists - we find out the truth.

I liked that neither character is flawless, as it made them more real to me. As real as the world of ballet that emerges from these pages. You can tell that the author is passionate about ballet and has first-hand experience of being on a stage.

This is a marvellous read!

Three words to describe it. Atmospheric. Immersive. Intriguing.

Do I like the cover? I love it!

Have I read any other books by the same author? No, but I have read reviews and I want to read her debut.

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