Author: Jenny McLachlan
Genre: Middle Grade, Contemporary
Release Date: 3 July, 2014
Source: Bloomsbury Australia. Thank you!
Goodreads
Bea Hogg is shy but fiery inside. When national dance competition Starwars comes to her school looking for talent, she wants to sign up. It's just a shame her best friend agreed to enter with school super-cow Pearl Harris. Bea will fight back! But when school hottie, Ollie Matthews, who also happens to be Pearl’s boyfriend, decides to enter the competition with Bea, she will have more than a fight on her hands.Review by Nara
This warm, nuanced, hilarious story about friendship, fortitude . . . and dancing is impossible not to fall in love with. Jenny’s voice is fresh and convincing, and she handles both darker and lighter elements of the story with equal panache.
Holy guacamole, this book was fluffy. Two weeks after reading this book I'm still thinking about how fluffy it was. Okay, I probably should have expected it from the title ("Flirty" Dancing- come on, it screams fluffy), but for some reason I thought it wouldn't be quite as light as it really was. Then again, I hadn't read the blurb, and there was no cover on my ARC, so there were really no other cues as to the fluffiness level.
The characters were very cliched. I feel that maybe because the book was so short, there wasn't that much development of the characters, and therefore I had a bit of difficulty in really being able to connect with them. The bully is quite one dimensional (although I assume she gets her own book later, as she's one of the "Ladybirds"), the love interest is frankly bland and the main character is average. The plot is also very predictable and superficial.
That being said, I suppose the book was good, in a very simplistic sort of way. Being so short, I read it pretty quickly and felt like it was satisfying enough for the amount of time I invested in it. I don't think I'd read it again though, and I won't be going on with the series. I can really only recommend it to people who want a very light and fun read without a lot of depth. I feel that younger readers will probably enjoy the book a lot more than I did.
It was okay
Ratings
Overall: 6/10
Plot: 2/5
Writing: 3.5/5
Romance: 3/5
Characters: 3/5
Cover: 2/5
