Hold Still meets You've Reached Sam in this lyrical novel about one young woman's journey through the Paris fashion scene as she chases promises, overcomes grief, and falls in love.
Alix Leclaire has a plan: graduate high school and land her dream job as a feather artist at Mille et une Plume, where her creations will help define high fashion. Her best friend Jeanne will get a record contract and they’ll take over the Paris art scene together.
But then Jeanne dies.
Alix is lost, until the day she feels Jeanne pushing her to the feather boutique. Soon, Alix is living a life she hardly recognizes—pursuing a passionate affair with an alluring artist, stealing feathers for her own creations, risking everything as Jeanne once did. But then Alix meets Blaise, the dreamy musician who comforts her, centers her, challenges her.
Torn between two beautiful boys and coping with grief, Alix’s art takes on a frightening and wild beauty. Living like Jeanne has given her everything she thought she wanted—but she must decide whether to hide in Jeanne’s shadow or soar on her own wings.
'Bright Burning Stars is the compulsively readable story. I was breathless and battling tears up until the very last stunning turns onstage and beyond. A dazzling, heart-wrenching debut.' -Nova Ren Suma, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Walls Around Us Best friends Marine Duval and Kate Sanders have trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School since childhood, where they've formed an inseparable bond forged by respective family tragedies and a fierce love for dance. When the body of a student is found in the dorms just before the start of their final year, Marine and Kate begin to ask themselves what they would do to win the ultimate prize: to be the one girl selected to join the Opera's prestigious corps de ballet. Would they die? Cheat? Seduce the most talented boy in the school, dubbed the Demigod, hoping his magic would make them shine, too? Neither girl is sure. But then Kate gets closer to the Demigod, even as Marine has begun to capture his heart. And as selection day draws near, the competition-for the prize, for the Demigod-becomes fiercer, and Marine and Kate realize they have everything to lose, including each other. In Bright Burning Stars, debut author A. K. Small pens a stunning, propulsive story about girls at their physical and emotional extremes, the gutting power of first love, and what it means to fight for your dreams.
