A vivid and grippingly claustrophobic read that is satisfying from beginning to end.
Dance With Me by Livia J. Elliot is a haunting and poignant fairy tale for adult readers, blending delicate imagery with psychological depth. The story follows a ceramic ballerina who exists only to dance atop her music box for her admiring elven owners. In this unique premise, the ballerina is elegance incarnate, praised for her flawless balance and endless pirouettes, until a fall cracks her porcelain body. Though visibly damaged, she is compelled to keep moving, driven by the insistent music and the expectations of her elven keepers. Despite the damage she has suffered, the ballerina rises again, compelled by the music to keep dancing even as she fractures further. She pushes herself to her limits and questions not only whether she can continue dancing, but whether she should. The music, once lovely, becomes oppressive. What begins as a story of artistry and adoration transforms into a meditation on control, performance, and the hidden cost of perfection. As the lines between duty and autonomy blur, Elliot explores how something once beautiful and purposeful can become a prison. With grace and mounting unease, the tale asks: should one continue performing for the sake of admiration, or break free before there’s nothing left?
Author Livia J. Elliot has a natural sense of elegance in her prose, which is graceful and spare, perfectly capturing the ballerina’s fragility and silent suffering, but also mirroring the discipline of a dancer really well. This authenticity and confidence in the writing style gets readers easily hooked and invested, and as the fantasy elements deepen, they’re convincingly utilized to explore psychological trauma in ways that teeter on the delicate balance of elegant and chilling. Elliot’s metaphors about performance and agency are lightly layered into the story so that it never feels too allegorical, and these moments are both accessible and profound through real-world situations that readers can relate to, never sacrificing narrative clarity. The pacing is a triumph, with Elliot tightening the tension like a winding spring and offering strong character voices and a surprising amount of visceral, heartfelt impact for so few characters and such an unusual storyline. A totally original and well-penned gothic tale, Dance With Me is a vivid and grippingly claustrophobic read that is satisfying from beginning to end.
