The Cranes Dance by Meg Howrey

The Cranes Dance reminded me a lot of the movie Black Swan--without quite so much craziness. Kate Crane is a ballerina in New York. Her younger sister Gwen also comes to NY to dance and soon she is getting all the plum roles. She is also starting to exhibit some very strange behavior--hiding in the bathroom, taping Xs on the walls and writing out strings of numbers. Kate is trying to manage the grueling life of a ballerina while keeping her sister from spiraling totally out of control. She finally calls her parents to come and get Gwen. Then she sort of takes over Gwen's life--living in her apartment, wearing her clothes, swallowing her Vicodin, taking on her dance roles. And though her career is booming, Kate sees her life beginning to spin out of control too. Kate narrates the story and for the first half you feel that she didn't do enough to help poor Gwen. But as the story unfolds, we see that Gwen was a lot more selfish and manipulative than she seemed at first. By the end, I was hoping Kate would get her life back on track--and I didn't really care what happened to Gwen.