At First Sight: At nineteen, Emily is one half one of the most promising teams of pairs figure skating, even though she only made the move from singles to pairs the year before. She and her partner Chris dream of winning olympic gold at Salt Lake 2002.
And they seem to be on a good path thanks to their coach, Sergei a former junior world charmpion who left Russia after his career ended suddenly and mysteriously.
Sergei is young and handsome, and Emily has always liked him, but known he was out of limits. Until they start spending more time together coaching a novice team, and the spark that was there from the start begins to grow.
Second Glance: I kept the summary short because I don't want to accidentally spoil anymore. Life on the Edge starts in 2000 and covers about 2 years of Emily's life and career.
I'm a huge fan of figure skating so I was super excited to read this book, and I'm happy to say that I enjoyed it a lot. I was engrossed from the start and I liked Emily and Sergei and the other skaters and it was easy to just enjoy the reading experience.
I did have some frustrations though, mostly because a the beginning you don't know why Emily left singles skating, and that kind of nagged at me until I found it, there was no reason for it not to be mentioned earlier though. And I grew so frustrated because everyone made such a huge deal of Emily and Sergei dating and at first I couldn't see why since she was 19 and he 25. I never felt their interactions were skeevy or sketchy or creepy or anything of the sort, so I was like "Why is everyone making such a big deal out of this?".
But as the story progressed and I got back into the 2000 figure-skating-world frame of mind, it was easier to understand why it was such a big deal: reputation was everything back then since the judges could very well just give you whatever score they liked since the score system wasn't as detailed as if it's now. In fact, it was because of a big scandal during the Salt Lake winter olympics that the score system began to change
I still thought it was too big of a fuss about it, but it was easier to believe.
Other than that, I really enjoyed the book, even though it was completely PG and I sometimes wished there was a bit more in the romance front.
Bottom Line: All in all, I really liked Life on the Edge and I'm really looking forward to reading Edge of the Past, the follow up book where we get to see more of Sergei's past. Don't think you need to be a figure skating fan to like the book, but if you are it'll add a little something extra for you.
PS - To read another perspective on Edge of The Past check out Ashley's Review @ Book Labyrinth. I first heard of the book from her ;)
PS - To read another perspective on Edge of The Past check out Ashley's Review @ Book Labyrinth. I first heard of the book from her ;)
Ps -
Update: Per the author, Edge of the Past comes out November 27th!
Thanks so much for the great review, Alex! Edge of the Past will be released Nov. 27 :)
ReplyDeleteOn the forbidden relationship issue, there have been a number of foreign skaters and coaches that have hooked up over the years (they're much more lenient in other countries!), but the U.S. Figure Skating Association doesn't support coach and skater relationships, even if the skater is a consenting adult. They see it as a problem because the coach is in a position of power and could abuse that power if involved with a student. I probably should've made that clearer in the book :)