REVIEW: Dance by Judy Cuevas

Dance by Judy Cuevas was writ­ten in 1996 and is about:

The woman, reach­ing for a dream, pulls away from her lover’s arms, still long­ing for his touch…. the man, reach­ing out to rekin­dle the flame, desires her all the more…
The emo­tion­ally pow­er­ful story of two peo­ple in turn-of-the-century Paris. A man and a woman drawn together by fate… but haunted by the brief moment of pas­sion they shared in the past. Theirs was a dance of denial and attrac­tion. Dreams and desire. Self-reliance and need. And each step drew them closer to the great­est sac­ri­fice one heart can make for another…

I really enjoyed Dance by Judith Ivory aka Judy Cuevas. It is the sequel to Bliss which fea­tured Sebastian’s brother, Nardi de Saint Val­lier. Nardi is an artist and an ether drinker. In Dance the story is con­tin­ued and seems to encom­pass a vast array of sub­plots that made this book great but at it’s heart, it is about a daughter’s love for her father and gain­ing his acceptance.

In Bliss, Sebas­t­ian was metic­u­lous, cool, pre­cise, stiff-necked and likes to be in con­trol. It is when he loses that con­trol that makes him so desir­able and sexy and he does just that in Dance. As a lawyer, Sebas­t­ian has friends of influ­ence from all over the world. He is well respected and admired. A con­nois­seur of art, his­tory and poetry. He wasn’t exactly in con­trol when he first meets Marie Du Guard in Bliss. To elab­o­rate more will go into spoiler ter­ri­tory. In fact, if you haven’t read Bliss then this review is in a way a spoiler for you.

Marie Du Guard is look­ing to make a career in mov­ing pic­tures. Her suc­cess is stymied by her lack of finances. It is Sebas­t­ian who greets Marie after she arrives in Paris. She is there to ask her father for money to com­plete her film. Georges du Guard refuses to give his daugh­ter money because he finds her dreams unre­al­is­tic. Marie has always rebelled against her father as she finds that he always tries to con­trol her life and always expect­ing her to fail. He also finds her flighty and with­out direc­tion and refuses to invest in her career. So off she goes to find finan­cial sup­port elsewhere.

Find it she does with her pro­ducer and men­tor, Russell-Smith, who’s a char­la­tan way past his prime. Marie along with her pro­ducer and his two mod­els, Sally and Dot, take up res­i­dence in one of Sebastian’s ances­tral homes in Nor­mandy. After wit­ness­ing Marie’s fight with her father, Sebas­t­ian goes look­ing for her but doesn’t find her. He actu­ally does have a chance meet with Marie’s pro­ducer but he is unaware that he has rented his prop­erty to him and their film crew. Of course Sebas­t­ian is unaware that Marie is with them, too.

The scene where Marie and Sebas­t­ian meet again is funny and painful (for him). Sebas­t­ian goes out to the prop­erty where the film crew is shoot­ing a movie, only he doesn’t know that. He spies a young lady tied help­lessly to a tree and goes to res­cue her. How­ever, after real­iz­ing that he has stum­bled into a movie scene, it is the shock at see­ing Marie again that makes him loose all sense of self and he stum­bles, falls and breaks his leg.

The story really takes off when Sebas­t­ian is forced to stay with Marie and the rest of the film crew to allow his leg to heal. The sex­ual ten­sion and the “dance” between Sebas­t­ian and Marie is worth the price of this book alone. Only I don’t know what the price for this book goes for today because I was lucky to find my copy long before this author grew pop­u­lar. Mov­ing on. There’s a spar­ring scene between Sebas­t­ian and Russell-Smith that was funny. The men try to match wits with each other and gain the atten­tion of Marie. How­ever, I think Sebas­t­ian has the advan­tage on that score.

Much of the sex­ual ten­sion is gen­er­ated by the back and forth ban­ter­ing that seems to hap­pen when­ever Marie and Sebas­t­ian are alone together. I enjoyed all of their scenes together. The con­flict between them is seri­ous and involves Marie’s father, Georges. Sebas­t­ian must learn to work around Marie’s emo­tional bag­gage because Marie seems him as com­pe­ti­tion for her father’s affec­tions. It is a “dance” that Sebas­t­ian must do care­fully and cau­tiously in mak­ing sure that he doesn’t step on any toes.

Over­all, this book is sadly out of print*. I had hopes that one day it would be reprinted but the author no longer writes. Judith Ivory aka Judy Cuevas wrote some of her best work prior to sign­ing on with Avon. I think her work was very meaty and emo­tion­ally engag­ing — this story notwith­stand­ing. Dance is an apt title for this book. It is about a young woman’s self-discovery and ambi­tion to be a suc­cess and we see how she achieves it. It is about regrets and love lost, found and rekin­dled. The love story was a well writ­ten “dance” between two peo­ple who needed each other and it was beau­ti­fully chore­o­graphed. To con­clude, I really enjoyed Dance and if you have to break the bank or beg or bor­row this book — you should. My grade, A+.

*****

This review was writ­ten with some major edi­to­r­ial changes. I am very busy these days with noth­ing new to post at the moment and have decided to repost or reread and write reviews for some of my favorite romance fic­tion. Hope you enjoy and as always, thanks for stop­ping by.

*This book is going for $28.50 and up at Ama​zon​.com.

For Fur­ther Reading

• Book Dis­cus­sion of Judith Ivory’s “Black Silk” at Racy­Ro­manceRe­views, Dec. 6
• REVIEW: ‘Bliss’ by Judy Cuevas

Tagged as: Actress, father-daughter relationship, Judith Ivory, Judy Cuevas, Turn of the Century Paris