Synopsis from Amazon:
What would you do if you were given the opportunity to rebuild a broken relationship?
Alec and Nikki Scott are the perfect ice dancing duo, executing flawless technique and brilliant performance abilities each time they compete. No one doubts their camaraderie, not even their closest friends.
But looks can be deceiving. Off the ice, their relationship is in shambles. Ice dancing is the only thing they have in common anymore... and Alec wants to quit.
Just as Nikki feels like their relationship can't get any worse, an unexpected tragedy crashes into her life. She's left struggling with a difficult choice as her opinion of her brother slowly starts to change.
Whatever she decides, she knows her life will never be the same.
>>>>>
My Review:
This book was especially exciting to read because I was actually one of the first ones to see the rough draft of this novel in its first stages. The author and I happened to be in the same writing group, so when she started posting snippets of some of the scenes of this ice dancing brother and sister team, I and the other members of the group did not hesitate to encourage the pursuit of the tale in our efforts to foster the development of quality literature.
First of all, I applaud the solid premise. Brother and sister ice dancing team with
dreams of competing on a national and Olympic scale find these dreams
shattered when the brother has a diving accident.
Where do they go from here?
The issues this story deals with are very real and pertinent to the
target age group, the young tweeners who are still trying to figure out
who they are, much less how they should fit in with the people around
them, particularly their own siblings.
A
book rises and falls by its characters. I have seen books with a great
premise and a fantastic setting... But all of this was rendered flat and
monochromatic by the cardboard-cutout characters. If one can go to any
one page in a book and only read the dialogue, and someone who has never
read the book can still picture the kind of person speaking, then the
characters are strong.
That being said, I couldn't help noticing that
all the girls on the "cast" of "Becoming Nikki" tended to sound alike,
and all the boys sounded alike, which might have been detrimental, but
Elliott makes it work by developing people with differing tastes. They
may talk alike, but the difference in the sorts of things they talk
about helps the reader be able to tell them apart. So, full marks for
characters. (Except Bennett was kind of cheesy... Based on a friend of
the author's, perhaps?)
Not
only does the dialogue need to be strong, but it also needs to be
realistic. A fourteen-year-old will discuss things that interest or
concern someone with the responsibilities of a fourteen-year-old, and
she won't use a lot of multi-syllabic words or complicated terms to do
it.
While the dialogue in "Becoming Nikki" is fairly
realistic, there were times that I felt it a little bit over-cliched.
But maybe that's just me; and maybe it is how teens behave, somewhat,
but overplayed and repeated to the point of cheapness, at least when put
in a novel. Maybe I'm complaining too much.
I will say that
the dialogue was strongest between two characters; the weakest was
Nikki's inner monologues. I felt like the way Nikki talked to herself
showed probably more ignorance stretched over a longer period than the
author perhaps intended. But as a writer myself, I understand the
difficulty of such things, so I don't discount it as a total loss.
Elliott makes a valiant effort to make her point, and it certainly shows.
Also
I got more annoyed than entertained by the repetitive cheesiness of Bennett. I mean, there
are cheesy pickup lines that actually manage to be clever, and there are
proper times to use them. Unfortunately, the character apparently
missed the clever ones and used the ultra-cheesy ones far too often.
Cute, but not quite.
The plotline as a whole fell a little contrived, since most of the driving force relied on characters being clumsy and falling and hitting their heads. Not to
spoil anything, but using concussions as a vehicle for reconciliation is
a bit much. I could understand using the first concussion as the
"Inciting Moment".... But then to basically repeat it when all should
have been said and done in the denouement seemed like a cheap way out.
Additionally, I felt that there was sort of a disconnect between the blurb and the title of the story. I mean, sure it's from Nikki's perspective, but I never quite got the sense of "becoming" as one might expect from a book with this title. Also, (*minor spoilers*) I didn't ever feel like the situation was quite as dire or "revolutionary paradigm shift" as the blurb made it out to be. Just an observation--and yes, it did influence the scoring. Yes, Nikki has a choice to make, but it never really came off as totally earth-shattering.
Other
than that—and the strangeness over the amnesia (but again, that just
might be me personally; who knows but the author is writing from
experience?)—the plotline of the book did progress at a reasonable pace
as the characters worked through their issues.
I
will say, the resolution is good. It wasn't Mary-Sue-ish, in that the
main characters overcome the challenge to become the undisputed
champions of everything (as Mary Sues are wont to do) but it leaves the
reader with the satisfaction of knowing that the characters are going to
be all right, and better people for having gone through this
experience. (Though Bennett's pickup lines never got any better...)
Overall,
"Becoming Nikki" is a solid read, and ****4 STARS**** is a pretty great
debut for Miss Ashley Elliott! I look forward to more from her in the
future!
Further Reading: (Family Dynamics/Clean Reads//Trauma/Drama/Realistic Fiction)
The Vemreaux Trilogy--Mary E. Twomey
-The Way
-The Truth
-The Lie
The Painter Place Saga--Pamela Poole
-Painter Place
The Goode-Grace Mysteries--Cyn Mackley
-American Goth
Dawn of Steam Trilogy--Jeffrey Cook
-First Light
-Gods of The Sun
-Rising Suns
The Shaudrey Universe Series--J. E. Mueller
-Fire's Song
The Time Tree Chronicles--Lisa Rae Morris
-The Emergence
The Cadeau Series--Connie Olvera
-Who Can You Trust?
The Alexander Legacy--Sophronia Belle Lyon
-A Dodge, A Twist, and A Tobacconist
-The Pinocchio Factor
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