Review: Watch Her Fall by Erin Kelly

Ava Kirilova has spent her life working towards this moment. After years of practice and dedication, she’s not just ready to headline Swan Lake – she IS Swan Lake. But being the best has a downside. Because her father owns the dance company, Ava’s had to work twice as hard to prove that she is the best, and not just the favourite. And the journey to the top has been lonely.

While Ava puts everything into the role, and in ensuring that she’ll make her father proud, she’s sacrificed things like friendship, connection, and occasionally, her peace of mind. And maybe she was right to do that.

Just before her debut in the role she was born for, disaster strikes. Someone wants what Ava has, and they’re willing to do anything to get it. In a cruel representation of life imitating art, the tragedy of the Black Swan has bled into Ava’s life, and there’s no turning back now.

Watch Her Fall is like a dance itself – carefully choreographed, flawless, and unpredictable. In fact, there was a time when I started having flashbacks of Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis’ twisted relationship onscreen, and despaired that Erin Kelly would be following the same path.

I was so gloriously wrong. In just a few pages and several gasps, this book evolved from a well-known trop of jealously and despair into something so much darker and more delicious. While Ava dances as the two Swans, she deftly skips over every red herring you can imagine, until her steps, and the narrative they trace, emerge into new and unpredictable territory. This book will blow your mind, and if you love a good twist, then this will be your guiding star because it has so many, you’ll get whiplash.

Honestly, there is nothing to fault in this book, apart from the fact that it ends. From clever character development to shocking horrors and suspense, and a poetic prose, Watch Her Fall is nothing short or art, and you need it in your life. and then you’ll need more. So Erin Kelly, I hope you’re hard at work on your next literary treat.

Watch Her Fall by Erin Kelly is published by Hodder & Stoughton and is available in South Africa from Jonathan Ball Publishers.