Starting from Here by Paula Saunders

Rene is fifteen and her ballet teacher has retired. Another teacher is in Phoenix, so Rene uproots herself and moves to Phoenix to board with another dance student's family. When that placement doesn't work out, she moves to Denver to continue her studies. Her coming of age in Phoenix, Denver, and finally New York is explored in this novel.

So this is what I like to refer to as a “book club book”. It is unrelentingly 'real life' and actually reads more like a memoir than a novel. It is bleak, bleak, bleak and there's no real resolution at the end. It's well written, and a fairly fast read, but there's not one thing that will make you smile or chuckle. (Look, I was born in the seventies, but surely to goodness they weren't this bleak, were they?)

I received an ARC copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion.