Swan Feather (by Lorna Hill)

(Amazon UK link)

I had just finished the seventh in Lorna Hill's ballet series. I didn't much like it, but I thought would read the tenth, 'Swan Feather', which was also new to me. It was a little better, but there were still rather too many characters, some of whom would be bewildering to anyone who had not read previous books in the series.

This book is mainly about Sylvia Swan. She os a newly-introduced character, so it does stand pretty well as a complete story. There are some rather horrible incidents early in the book, which might disturb an over-sensitive young teenager. However they are soon in the past. More disturbing is the cruel and heartless Nigel who appears in previous books, and features again in this one.

The action is really much too rapid for my tastes. Do people really meet, fall in love and plan to get married in the space of about three weeks? However my main complaints are the multiple viewpoints and author comments that pepper this book. I feel that the story would would have worked much better if it had all been written from Sylvia's own perspective.

If you have read others in the series, this isn't a bad story to while away a couple of hours. But if not - or if you have no interest in ballet or teenage girls - there are far better children's books available.

This book is occasionally re-published, and fairly widely available second-hand.