Pointe of Pride

Overview

Carly Montgomery has only one goal as she arrives in Sydney, Australia: Be the world's best maid of honor. And then, when she gets back to New York City, she's going to figure out how to get promoted so she doesn't spend the rest of her ballet career in the corps de ballet playing Peasant Maiden #4.

But the second she steps off the plane, she runs into trouble—and into Nick Jacobs, the most uptight, judgmental, inconveniently attractive man she's ever met. And to their mutual horror, Nick is also in Sydney for a wedding. The same wedding. In which he is the best man.

Carly will do anything for her best friend, including running all over Sydney with Nick—Nick who has his life together, Nick who's made the transition out of ballet into photography so perfectly, Nick who has the most irritatingly sharp cheekbones and stormy blue eyes. And when the director of New York Ballet announces that she'll be making her decision about promotions ahead of schedule, Carly chooses to stay in Sydney, even if it means shelving her pride to ask Nick for help.

Nick Jacobs is coming back to Sydney with a secret. His life in Paris, where he recently retired from ballet, has fallen apart. With no girlfriend and no new career to speak of, Nick can't bear to tell his friends at home the humiliating truth. And after fifteen years dancing overseas, what does home even mean anymore?

Nick doesn't want to team up with Carly Montgomery, a human hurricane who creates chaos every time she walks in the room, but sparring with her makes him feel the most alive he's felt in months. When she asks him for help securing her promotion, he sees an opportunity to kickstart his own flagging career. Looking at Carly through his lens all day starts to change how Nick sees her, and soon, he can't stop staring. Carly's a human hand grenade, but suddenly Nick wouldn't mind pulling the pin.

When she finds out the truth about him, though, the explosion might destroy them both.

Reviews

"Angyal’s intimate familiarity with the ballet world shines through and it’s easy to cheer on her flawed, three-dimensional characters. This is a page-turner." —Publishers Weekly

“Pointe of Pride is utterly charming.”  —Cat Sebastian, author of We Could Be So Good and The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes

“Sexy, sweet, and emotional, Pointe of Pride puts my favorite kind of character—the feisty best friend—at the center of her own narrative, with a hero destined to become the sternest of Stern Brunch Daddies.” —Andie J. Christopher, USA Today bestselling author of Not the Girl You Marry

“Pointe of Pride is an intelligent, sensitive romance. Underneath Nick and Carly’s banter there is real love blooming, and it’s a joy to watch them realize it.” —Jenny Holiday, USA Today bestselling author of Canadian Boyfriend

“Pointe of Pride combines witty banter with elegant prose, and the tension between the sparring leads kept me turning pages until all hours of the night. The romance at the story’s core is honest, tender, and truly lovely. Like any good dancer, Pointe of Pride digs deep and then soars.” —Andie Burke, author of Fly with Me

“Chloe Angyal knows how to develop characters that you want to root for and shake by the shoulders in equal measure. Someone said the new grumpy/sunshine is chaos/spreadsheet, and this book delivers incredible chaos/spreadsheet tension, along with a great cast of characters and, of course, excellent ballet.” —KD Casey, author of the Unwritten Rules series

“The tenacity of the joy and subtlety of the vulnerability in Chloe Angyal’s writing makes it impossible to stop reading. Pointe of Pride is funny, romantic, sexy, and above all, so richly human that you will see yourself falling in love while reading. Angyal captures the things we love most about romance, and you’ll be unable to put it down.” —Denise Williams, author of Technically Yours

Author Biography

Chloe Angyal is the author of the novel Pas de Don't as well as Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet from Itself, which the Boston Globe called “incisive and unsparing” and “an important read for ballet lovers and an essential part of any conversation moving forward.” Chloe holds a BA from Princeton and a PhD in arts and media from the University of New South Wales. She lives in Iowa.