Thalia @ Pictures in the Words

I’d actually been pretty excited to read this, since the summary was incredibly intriguing—I waited for a long time to have the main character, Mac, open up about her abuse and what happened in her childhood that made her home life so difficult, and where, exactly, her little sister came into all this. Sibling stories are enough to make me emotional, and I thought there was no way this would be boring. I was wrong, however. A large portion of this book was actually spent on discussing Mac’s biking habit—which she only discussed with friends equally into biking. For someone like me—who knows literally nothing about bikes except they have pedals, gears, and tires—this was a giant problem. Fortunately, the ending was powerful and gripping, so it wasn’t a total waste, but I don’t think I’d actually recommend this one.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

What I Liked: Spoilers!

• I think the climax worked really well, all things considered. With Mac telling the police the truth about what had happened to her and brining the evidence to them—it’s difficult to convict people in cases like that, but I think Davis did a relatively good job of showing us how Mac got around the usual system and got her father behind bars. I wasn’t surprised that Barb, Mac’s stepmom, was so loving and motherly towards her in the end, and I think it really helped to solidify their relationship for the readers. So the end was really the highlight of the whole book, on a few different levels. It was also the only part where I felt emotionally connected to Mac at all.

What I Didn’t Like:

• A huge chunk of this book was spent talking about biking. For any casual reader who isn’t really into biking, like Mac is, this proves to be an especially confusing read. I don’t know anything about bikes, so I felt like most of the time, I had to try and decode what Mac and her friends were talking about. There was a huge trip they were supposed to take, but when we got there, I didn’t understand the importance of it. I didn’t understand what biking did for Mac, other than let her feel like she could run away. I didn’t understand what they were talking about half the time, and I can probably guess that the majority of readers also won’t know all the ins and outs of biking. When books involve special knowledge in a particular field, it’s important to still make the book and the dialogue accessible to readers who might not be as knowledgeable as the characters. Otherwise, we feel out of the loop and confused most of the time, which is unfortunately what happened here. Plus, all the time spent on biking detracted majorly from the real conflict of the story—Mac’s history of abuse from her father. It seemed to take a backseat—so far in the backseat that it might as well have been in the trunk—to everything else with her friends, and that was supremely disappointing.

• It seems unrealistic to me that Mac wouldn’t have ever considered that Lily, her little sister, would have been molested by her father, too. Or that she could have lived with him all those years and nobody would know something was wrong, instead of thinking she was just a brat who yelled at her dad a lot. Plus, we’re supposed to believe that Mac is highly protective of Lily, which is true when it comes to their father, but she also yells at the little girl and puts her down and makes her feel inferior sometimes—which isn’t loving or protective at all, and instead very destructive. But those issues between the sisters weren’t ever addressed, as far as I remember, and all those little pieces didn’t fit together cohesively. I know child molesters can get away with terrible things, but it didn’t fit that Mac wouldn’t have ever let on, nor that she wouldn’t suspect the same thing happening to Lily.

Overall: This was only a somewhat decent novel, and it fell flat for me most of the time. The long passages of dialogue that discussed biking and the parts of it made my eyes glaze over because I didn’t understand any of it anyway, and I felt like the abuse Mac had faced as a child and her journey in overcoming it wasn’t actually the main plot of the book. I wanted it to be more, to be more serious, to show the horror of this problem and the bravery in coming forward and trying to kill your demons was only a small part of what it had to offer. Definitely disappointing, as far as being a compelling and emotional read was concerned. I would honestly only recommend this to readers who are interested in biking and reading about the abusive subject matter, and would warn other readers to find something else.

(http://thaliasbooks.tumblr.com/post/102849971022/dancing-with-the-devil-review)