They're Going to Love You by Meg Howrey

All pain is equal at the moment of suffering, but after that, suffering gets Assigned Seating.
They're Going to Love You
Meg Howrey
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I absolutely JINXED myself by wrapping up my Best books of 2022 too early in December because it's not over until it's over. They’re Going to Love You took me by storm in the last days of the year, prompting me to think about picking it up every second I had free.
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Although I’d seen some raves in the bookstagram world earlier in the year, I passed it over because the story centers around ballet, and for some reason that didn't interest me. But let me assure you, this book contains multitudes.
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They're Going To Love You is both a crushing and yet absolutely beautiful story of a woman's reckoning with her dying father after a long estrangement. We jump back and forth in time as Carlisle unravels the history of why they haven't spoken and the pacing of the book felt perfect. We learn about her life through her flashbacks - her mother was a Balanchine ballerina and her father managed a ballet school. Her parents have been divorced for many years and her father is now married to James, who delivers the news that Carlisle needs to return home to see her father before he passes.
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Much of the story unfolds in a Greenwich Village brownstone, which of course I loved, but I fell so hard into Carlisle's narrative and was wowed by both Howrey's writing and the way she wove in the AIDS epidemic in NYC. It is a time I remember well and some recent novels have handled this ugly piece of our history with historical accuracy and it always reminds me how far we’ve come from the fear and ignorance of the 80s.
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Ultimately this is a book about how we come to terms with who our parents are and how they raised us when we too become adults. It is also a beautiful story about acceptance and forgiveness. Ballet is a framework but does not dominate the story- it provided a lovely outline. A five star read.