The Winner: A Ballroom Dance Novel by Erin Bomboy {Book Review}

Disclosure: Leels Loves Books received a free ebook copy of this book in exchange for my review.

Book Title: The Winner: A Ballroom Dance Novel
Author: Erin Bomboy
Genre: Adult Fiction
Pages: 326

The most prestigious ballroom dance competition in the United States.

​Two dancers need to win.

Only one can.

Nina Fortunova wasn’t supposed to end up almost thirty, divorced, with her dreams of winning shattered. She teams up with Jorge Gonzalez, a Latin dancer, to reinvent the flashy Smooth style. When the Chairman of the Judges offers to throw the competition in their favor, Nina must decide how far she will go to win, even if it means losing Jorge.

Carly Martindale is doing everything she’s been taught not to do—placing her happiness first by dancing with Trey Devereux, the former three-time champion who’s returned to competition for mysterious reasons. Carly becomes obsessed with Trey and allows him to control her every move at great risk to her physical and emotional health. How far will she sacrifice herself, so Trey and she can win? Co-workers, then friends, and now arch competitors, Nina and Carly face off to determine who will be the winner.

Bright, emotive, and told through dual narrators, The Winner examines the costs associated with winning, the internalization of parental ambition, and the effect of gendered roles on and off the dance floor. A literary romance, The Winner is perfect for readers who love Dancing with the Stars, Strictly Come Dancing, So You Think You Can Dance, and the old-school elegance of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

The Winner contains a fact-versus-fiction section at the end.

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Wow! What a rollercoaster!

We start out following a husband and wife dancing duo.

Eventually, we add a second (third?) character and find our main characters are Nina and Carly.

Nina and Carly go from strangers to co-worker to teacher/student to competitors to friends.

Throughout the story, we live in a world of dance competition and travel through loss, love, competition and betrayal.

I did find the beginning a little slow but was sucked in and couldn’t put it down.

The story definitely did not go as I wished or thought, but overall, I found it to be an enjoyable read.

About the Author
A native of Richmond, Virginia, Erin Bomboy trained as a classical ballet dancer before spending a decade as a professional competitive ballroom dancer. She holds an MFA in Dance Performance and Choreography from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter where she works as a writer, editor, and teacher in the dance field. In her free time, Erin enjoys bacon, books, cats, and wine.

She is the author of The Piece: A Contemporary Ballet Novel and The Winner: A Ballroom Dance Novel. Her next novel, tentatively titled The Pas de Deux: A Classical Ballet Novel, will explore the relationship between a ballerina at the end of her career and the much-younger dancer with whom she falls in love. Taking the shape of a traditional pas de deux, it will premiere in 2018.

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