Review: An Intimate Dance...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 22, 2013
From the moment I saw the cover and title, I was curious about this book.There is something about the parallels and oppositions between dancing and fighting as well as the concentration, focus, strength and grace required (re: ballet and mixed martial arts in this case) that I find intriguing.Maze and Ivy are portrayed as sharing an immediate and electric attraction and this is explored and expanded upon throughout the book. I really enjoyed this story and watching these two interesting characters interact, separate and then reconnect as their lives took them where they needed to be before they could inevitably come back around to each other. They have their share of heartaches and challenges yet I never doubted that there was something special between the two of them as life continued to put some huge obstacles in their way re: secrets, misunderstandings, losses, injuries, personal debts, the Triad, etc.My 4 star rating is based on my appreciation for this story which drew me right in and held my attention. I polished it off in an evening because I wanted to know how things would be resolved. I enjoyed the first person point of view from the perspective of both characters, Maze and Ivy, which allowed me to understand how they felt about each other and gave me a window into their thoughts re: the issues and dangers that got in the way of them being together.On a different note, this book deserves to be re-edited so that readers don't trip over some of the errors and issues that interrupt the flow the story. For example, the beginning of Chapter 3 is written in the third person for a very short period of time and then switches back to the first person POV in the same section. I must admit it threw me off as I tried to determine what was going on and realized it was not what the author intended.There were also some errors that could easily be fixed with a reread by whoever is doing the editing since a spell checking program would not catch them, i.e. the word "existed" instead of "exited" when a character was leaving the room. I understand that grammatical errors happen to the very best of writers and therefore write this with the best of intentions. I believe this book can only benefit from the author knowing about the above observations for future possible updates / reissues.So long story short, this was a really good read, I liked the characters and their unfolding love story as well as the action and I'm looking forward to the next book in the series!