The novel The Audition, written by Madison Nicole Ziegler, is the first book of a trilogy.

It was published in October 2017 and contains 256 pages. The book is about a twelve-year-old girl, called Harper, who just moved to Florida. She had a hard time leaving her dance team back home, but her parents guaranteed her to find a new dance team right away. As a consequence, Harper auditions at a dance studio and gets accepted into its new competition team with four other girls. Of course, Harper is excited about that, but when she takes her first class at the new studio, everything is different than what she expected. The competition between the dancers seems enormous, compared to the one at her old studio and Harper feels like everybody is better than her. Three of the girls on the team know each other for a long time and don’t want new people to be part of the team. Luckily, the fourth girl on the team is new to the studio as well. The two girls become friends quickly, but still the other girls are giving them a hard time. The rehearsals for their first competition do not go well and the pressure on Harper increases. The girls realize that they need to work together, in order to achieve something, even if they not like each other at first. Will they step up to the plate and win their first competition or is it going to be an epic fail ?

I enjoyed reading the book, because it is very entertaining. In my opinion, the book displays the feeling of being new in a dance studio and the struggles you might have really well. If you are aware of what happens in the plot, you may notice that Madison Nicole Ziegler, the author, is bringing a lot of her own experiences into the book. She is a famous dancer, who was part of the popular Lifetime reality TV Show Dance Moms for six years, what makes her an expert in terms of dance competitions. She describes the fun times on a dance team, such as traveling around together, as well as the not so nice situations, like being up against the rival team at a competition. The book has a lot of dance insights in it and displays the dance world realistic, which makes it a great reading experience for people, who dance. Even if you aren‘t dancing, the book could be interesting, because you get an idea of what it is like, to be on a dance competition team. The characters in the book differ a lot. While Harper is more of a perfectionist, her friend Lily is way more relaxed and the other girls on the team are worrying a lot about other people‘s opinion and are obsessed with makeup and their phones, but they still have one thing in common : they all love to dance. This combination of different characters makes the book interesting and causes some fights between the girls. The book is a lot about friendship. Missing old friends, finding new friends, trusting your friends, conflicts and teamwork. All of those topics are covered and you can find a moral between the lines. It shows that it doesn‘t matters how different the girls are, because they share a passion and that alone can make all their differences insignificant. Also, the novel is a lot about finding yourself and not changing yourself just to be liked by other people. This is definitely great, if you are in a situation like Harper, who moved away from home and needs to find new friends, but it is also worth reading for any other person, because in today's world it sometimes is hard to be happy with yourself, if everybody around you seems better than you or tries to change you. Everybody who moved into a new town or who dances will feel totally understood while reading the book. Not only those people will feel understood, but also the book might gives them inspiration of what to do, if they currently are in a situation like Harper.

What I like about the book is that the author writes in a really natural and casual English, which is well to understand and easy to read. I think, it is easier to read than most books for kids, cause it is written by a teen. It is written out of Harper‘s perspective, so the reader really understands how she feels like. The author describes Harper’s emotions in a touching way, but still wraps it up with a glimpse of humor. She also uses actual dance terminology, which is unusual for books related to that topic, but explains it afterwards. The novel is a real page-turner. It is not in the same way suspenseful as an action book or a thriller is, but it is suspenseful in its very own way. When I read the book, I felt close to Harper and the dance team and just wanted to know what happens next.

I am a dancer by myself and it is hard to find good books related to dance, so I was happy to have found this one, which captures being on a competition team so realistic. Also, the book goes into great detail about the dance classes, the costumes and competitions and conveys the mood in a dance studio pretty good.

In addition to that, it deals with current topics, like social media and I think, kids will definitely feel familiar with some of the situations the book describes.

What I don‘t like so much about the book is that the girls besides Harper and Lily have many stereotypic interests, like clothes, makeup, ect. Sometimes those interest are displayed a little exaggerated, which makes the characters seem unrealistic and also kind of unsympathetic. In my opinion, the author could also highlight Harper‘s dance team back home more. Harper has a picture of them in her room and sometimes thinks about them in the novel, but they aren‘t actually part of her daily life anymore, which seems sad. Moving away doesn‘t mean the end of a friendship and they could still text and support her. I think, bringing them in more would make the book more interesting and give the opportunity to tell the reader more about Harper‘s background. Also, it could possibly cheer up kids that are about to move or leave their friends, because it would show that distance between them and their friends doesn‘t necessarily breaks their friendship.

In my opinion, the novel is an easy-to-read, gripping, captivating, insightful and inspirational book, which is definitely worth reading it. I will definitely read the following two books of the trilogy, because I really like the way the novel is written and how it flows. Especially for dancers or people, who moved, it is a great book and I would recommend it to girls age 9-12.