Chance (Strictly Come Dancing Novels)

by Alex Hines

[Leah]

Strictly Come Dancing (or its American sister Dancing With The Stars) is a series everybody knows about. Each Autumn/Winter, a number of celebrities with little or no dancing experience join forces with a number of professional dancers and spend so many weeks learning to dance, with a couple being voted off every week until we get a winner (well done Harry from McFly!). So it’s a little bit surprising that someone has only just in the past couple of years, jumped on the idea of companion novels. The first novel Strictly Shimmer was released last year and Strictly Chance is the latest novel that’s tied (somewhat loosely, it must be said) to Strictly Come Dancing.

Strictly Chance is only loosely based on Strictly Come Dancing, as in the only real correlation to Strictly is the fact Ava, the main character, is a fan of the show and watches it religiously, and also on the fact that Viv, the lady designing Ava’s sister Lauren’s wedding dress, makes the costumes for the show. Instead, the novel is about Ava Dunne, who’s stuck in a rut. She loves her flower shop, Dunne’s, but everything else in her life is stale. Her boyfriend is the most unromantic person ever, her best friend is miles away in London while Ava’s in Salisbury, and the only shining light is her love of dancing and when she gets the chance to join a dance class, Ava doesn’t even need to think about it. And when she meets a dark, handsome stranger, a man who keeps buying flowers from her shop, she finds she can’t get him off her mind.

I really enjoyed Strictly Chance. I loved the florists Ava owns and the comings and goings of some of the customers, I liked how Ava and Matt debated who the good/bad customers were (ie. the ones who were buying flowers because they were cheats and the ones who were just plain old romantic). I liked Ava as a character, she’s pretty much harmless and I liked her, she was sweet. It wasn’t a perfect novel, but it wasn’t as if it had any major issues, either. It was just a quick read though I do fear it won’t stay in my mind very long. I did find myself enchanted by Ava’s dance classes, I love novels about dance having tried a dance class once or twice when I was about 11 and I love the idea of learning to dance, just not the whole you know learning to dance thing because that terrifies me, so instead I get my fix from novels and there’s some nice dance stuff in Strictly Chance.

Strictly fans should be aware that the link to Strictly is tenuous at best, so if you’re expecting all the sparkle and glamour of reading about Strictly, you won’t get that, although Ava and her best friend Mel DO go to see a Strictly show. It’s a nice tie-in book, but it is a story in itself, which is important. Tie-in books could quite easily get lost in trying to be like the show/film it’s tying in to but Strictly Chance stands alone and proud and has a story to it. I liked the book, it was a harmless read over all. It was cute, it was sweet and it had some lovely characters, and the dancing just really tied it all off for me. However, I do worry that it’s not very memorable and that’s where it loses out for me. It’s enjoyable whilst you read it, and it’s an enjoyable enough novel… But it’s just not one I can see myself remembering, it’s not necessarily a strong enough novel so that when I come back to it in a year’s time I’ll remember everything, because I won’t, sadly. However, it’s a quick and enjoyable read and Strictly fans will like the dancing in the novel.