A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson - Review

Hello Book Lovers!!!

I've finally finished A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson. It took me so long to read and I found it dragged on an awful lot. But more about that in a bit.

In this book we follow Harriet Morton on her journey trying to pursue her dream of becoming a ballerina. She is approached by a Russian Ballet Coach to go on a tour with his company and star in their shows. Of course this is something that Harriet would love to do, however her father is completely against the whole idea.

Harriet manages to escape however and starts touring with the company. She is enjoying her time with the company however she is constantly worried that her father is going to find her.

Her father of course is doing everything he possibly can to find her and bring her home where he plans to punish her for her behaviour. He sends out other people to find her and they even go to watch some of the performances but find it difficult to pick her out among the large number of girls all dancing the same and dressed in the same costumes.

I don't really want to say anything else about the plot as I don't want to give anything away in case you would like to read it so now onto my thoughts and opinions of the book.

I found it incredibly slow and it took me ages to get through. I found it confusing keeping up with the large number of characters introduced as they were constantly being introduced throughout the story so when you think you've got used to who everyone is, more characters are then thrown into the mix.

I didn't feel I was getting attached to any of the characters and that is something I love to do when reading so that wasn't a good element for me.

I also found the writing style a little bit difficult to stay focused on. I felt my mind wandering a lot and that meant I was getting lost a lot on what was going on in the story. I also couldn't picture the locations very well as I didn't feel like the writing was that descriptive and when it was, it dragged on way too much.

Overall I didn't enjoy this story anywhere near as much as I was hoping to and it's probably not something I'd read again.

Rating /5

1

I hope I enjoy the next book I decide to read a lot more than I did this one.

Happy Reading!!!

xHannahx