R E V I E W | Journey of a Butterfly by Mia Kun

This is Mia Kun's debut novel, Journey of a Butterfly, a story centred around school & ballet. And I'm surprised at how much I enjoyed it! I've read plenty of YA's before but never novel so heavily influenced by dance, so when the author reached out and asked if I would like to be apart of her ARC team, I very excitedly said yes!

Losing a bet is one thing; losing yourself is a whole different story.

Katherine Shaw's childish fear got her into making an innocent bet with her best friend, Alex, which landed her at Thornfield Academy when The Royal Ballet was ready to offer her a contract and fulfil her destiny of becoming the youngest prima ballerina.

Instead of facing the competitiveness of the ballet company, Kat has to face the real world and get a taste of everything she was missing out including all the jealousy, fake friends and a life changing first love.

Eventually she needs to decide if her love for Will can overpower her love for ballet and ultimately, she will have to choose between them.

Meanwhile, Alex was running away from himself. Choosing Thornfield, the furthest school possible was supposed to give him a fresh start. But new beginnings come at a price.

The story follows Kat, a 16 year old girl set to become the youngest prima ballerina in the Royal Ballet company. But after loosing nationals to her best friend, winds up at Thornfield boarding school. Priviously Kat and her best friend Alex have been home schooled so that they could focus their energy entirely on ballet, so starting a "regular" school with "regular" non dancer people is a huge adjustment for them, especially Kat. But Thornfield isn't s totally normal school as it has a dance program that runs through all years, and Kat and Alex's new teacher is none other than the famous Nikolaev Demidov.

Kun packs a lot of drama and rollercoaster-of-emotions in to this beautiful novel that is so whole heartedly a love letter to Ballet. You get a true sense of the author's personal love and devotion to dance. At times I wanted to tell Alexa to play me some Lewis Capaldi so I could dance around my house. I've always been fascinated by dance and was so happy that Kun gives the reader a little glossary of ballet terms at the start of the book, as she doesn't shy away from using dance terminology which I greatly admire.

During Kat's time at Thornfield she encounters so much bitchiness and sabotage from people who claim they want to be friends and finds herself quite often at the centre of the rumour mill.  She is one of the most famous young ballerina's in the industry so she had a huge dance following so every thing she does is scrutinised through social media. 

Before she knows it she's on the recieving end of extreme jealousy, hurt (both physically and mentally) and betrayal but also finds her first love (awww 🥰).

I don't want to give too much of the plot away but all in all I really enjoyed the storyline. I did find a few niggly things like we don't actually know where about's Thornfield Academy is, somewhere in the south west of England on the coast, maybe Cornwall? And the conversation between characters didn't always flow perfectly to my personal liking but considering this is a debut novel and Indie publication I honestly really enjoyed it and cannot wait to see what happens next with these characters. I'll definitely be waiting for the second installment.

Journey of a Butterfly is released on 25th August you can buy your copy on Amazon 🩰