Silence can hold tremendous power. Katarina Vyatka knows how to wield it like others wield swords. Like negative space, the void of it carves precise but seemingly unattainable shapes.

For the longest time, unattainable is exactly how Katarina feels to Juliette Lucian-Sorel, despite the latter being the Princess of Paris, the Prima Assoluta of the Paris Opera Ballet. Milena McKay is the author who made me love Ice Queens and Katarina is now sharing the title of Jude’s favourite Ice Queen with the one and only Neve Blackthorne. Like Neve, Katarina is such a complicated and mysterious character, Juliette, undeniably great in her own right, never stood a chance.

When the book opens, Juliette is twenty-five and she hasn’t come up against many hurdles yet. It’s the mid-1980s and she’s at the top, worshipped and respected. Despite her former girlfriend—someone I was extremely curious to get to know as a person—having gone back to the United States, Juliette is surrounded with love, from her best friend and colleague Gabriel, from Francesca, the director of Paris Opera Ballet who sometimes shares her bed, from the ballet lovers of the French capital, the President of the French Republic among them. The tumultuous times the company is going through have spared Juliette so far. Katarina, a decade or so older, is a completely different story. Born and raised in the Soviet Union, she’s seen the worst of humanity. And while she landed on her pointe shoes, it wasn’t unscathed.

Reverence is firmly rooted in the McK-Universe, so besides getting introduced to Katarina and Juliette, or other new characters such as Gabriel and Francesca, the reader crosses paths with some we’ve encountered before, some in passing, others more closely.

Some books grab you by the throat from the first sentence. Reverence is one of them. A few words are enough to set the tone, and in true McKay fashion, they announce beautiful drama: “Her first ever glimpse of Katarina Vyatka was one of cold eyes and bloody satin ribbons.” None of Milena McKay’s novels is “just a romance”. Not that there’s anything wrong with romances that are just that, but that’s not what her books are. They all contain an element or more of societal issues, whether it’s the patriarchy, homophobia, greed—be it for money or power… This one explores all these topics through the prism of the Cold War. As she explains in one of the two afterwords (if you think you’ve run out of tears by the end the story, one or the other will prove you wrong), the ordeals Katarina went through were for a large part inspired by the author’s grandmother’s life.

When Milena McKay started talking about her idea for “a ballet book”, I was like “yay, go for it, it’s exciting!” but to be honest, any idea that may lead to a McKay book is exciting. Ballet, to me, was just a setting before I read Reverence. Now I wish I could see Juliette and Katarina on stage. McKay writes ballet the way she writes everything, with exact, perfectly chosen words that pull the reader into the scene, on stage, in the wings, in the classrooms hidden in the bowels of Palais Garnier.

There are the words she chooses, and those she elects to skip, even though they’re technically needed, favouring the rhythm of the narration, a sense of what needs to be there and what does not. As I said, there’s power in silence, and negative space is an underrated art form in writing.

I could rave for hours about McKay’s unique style, but it’s only one reason Reverence (her first historical romance!) claimed my heart. With each release, the author delivers a new feast of angst and feelings, of—sometimes self-inflicted—torment, of betrayals and deceptions. I adore Juliette and Katarina and I could be mad at her for making me fall in love with her ballerinas just so she could then torture them—and her readers—but nothing she writes is gratuitous. Everything enriches the story. Everything contributes to the characters’ growth. The suffering and the joy alike.

In this book as in previous ones, McKay laces painful situations with hope and a sense of humour that brings relief when it’s most needed. Get ready to suffer, though. Have handkerchiefs on hand. Reverence broke me—several times. Yet in the end what stays with me is how strong and beautiful and resilient these women are.

Even though I was part of the alpha and beta teams, I was still swept away when I read Reverence a fourth time for this review and I’m looking forward to a fifth when the audiobook comes out.

Also, to my utmost delight, one of my favourite artists designed the cover and inside art. I love Jenifer Prince‘s world and her style fits this story and its characters superbly.

Video review: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DA3cPsrgGkN/

I received a copy from the author and I am voluntarily leaving a review.

Read all my reviews on my website (and please get your books from the affiliation links!): Jude in the Stars