Trapeze is a high-flying YA Romance, where the heroine suddenly finds herself firmly rooted to the ground, and must come to peace with her own past.

Corey Ryder is a teenage trapeze artist performing in the circus, in a troupe known as Mystique. It’s the only life she’s ever known, until a tragedy sees her life turned upside down and she’s forced to live with a mother she’s never known, in a small town with narrowed views.

There was good and not-so-good for me in this book. I also think it’s important to be mindful that once I started reading Trapeze, I realised I wasn’t the exact target audience that this book was intended for, and as I was thinking about writing this review, I felt like someone else with different desires from a book could really enjoy Trapeze.

I liked the pace of the developing romance with Corey and her love interest in Sherwood. For me, this was the strongest aspect of the book, and how this romance developed until the end of the book is exactly as I think it should have been, given the personalities of Corey and the love interest. While being careful not to give spoilers, the ending the author chose was an ending true to all the characters and I respected the ending Ansell wrote. The ending itself was what moved this book into a higher rating for me.

The not-so-good bits of this book were mainly in the writing itself. Believing Corey’s age and how she was presented in the book was hard for me – I didn’t buy it or the age of any of the other teenagers for that matter. For nearly all the other characters, they weren’t developed enough to be really believable – there needed to be more.

There were also aspects of the plot that didn’t feel real and this was the hardest thing I found in enjoying the book. It took me a lot of persistence to get past this, and I really got to a point where I just had to ignore that it wasn’t believable for me and just keep reading.

That being said, overall this book had some good points as I’ve mentioned, and it had moments that were enjoyable to read. I give this read 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 for reviewing purposes.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.