Three Muses

By: Martha Anne Toll

Three Muses is a love story that enthralls: a tale of Holocaust survival venturing through memory, trauma, and identity, while raising the curtain on the unforgiving discipline of ballet. In post-WWII New York, John Curtin suffers lasting damage from having been forced to sing for the concentration camp kommandant who murdered his family. John trains to be a psychiatrist, struggling to wrest his life from his terror of music and his past. Katya Symanova climbs the arduous path to Prima Ballerina of the New York State Ballet, becoming enmeshed in an abusive relationship with her choreographer, who makes Katya a star but controls her life. When John receives a ticket to attend a ballet featuring Katya Symanova, a spell is cast. As John and Katya follow circuitous paths to one another, fear and promise rise in equal measure. Song, Discipline, and Memory weave their way through love and loss, heartbreak and triumph

NOTE: Thank you to Netgalley and Regal House Publishing for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. This review may contain spoilers. 

Three Muses takes you on a journey through time. It’s also a journey through the lives of Katya Symanova and John Curtin, both broken, both haunted, seeking to find their place and purpose in their worlds. 

This book starts out as two separate stories. We meet Janko, later known as John, a small boy given up by his mother to the Nazis hoping his talent for singing saves his life. As he sings for those who killed his family, a chasm forms deep in his heart separating him from his love for song. Upon rescue, he travels to America where he is placed in the care of a family who recently lost their son in the war. They become his replacement family and he becomes their replacement son. He adopts the name of John Curtin and becomes a psychiatrist. 

John was my favorite character in this story. I loved how his first patient really was himself. He’s shy and courageous and respectful and so kind and he’s all these things while dealing with PTSD from WWII. I love how we get to see his transition from a scared little boy to a young man trying to please his new American family and finally, into an adult. John struggles to understand the meaning of love in all its selfless facets until he meets Katya, who helps him understand that to love is to sacrifice. 

The other story is Katherine Sillman who is gifted with ballet lessons after her mother’s death. As she grows into a proper ballerina, she catches the eye of the choreographer/composer, Boris Yanakov, who changes her name to Katya Symannova, putting the curtain up between her and everyone else in her life but him. As he grooms her, she becomes entranced with him and by him. 

Katya is probably my least favorite character in this story. While we do see a beautiful character arc and wonderful development, I cringe at the idea of any woman losing herself in a man to the degree Katya did. She allowed him to rob her of everything, her friends, her family (in a way) and finally, her relationship with John. He literally chains her to him for the duration of her life. It was sad to me to see her disregard warnings from her friend, Maya, and completely forget she even had a father. She only remembers him when he gets hurt and needs help. 

I also found her to be a little self-serving in her relationship with John. He said she gave him a lot when he said she gave him back his Papa. However, I can’t really see where she gave more than he did. The deception of it all was upsetting also in light of her relationship with Boris. John was too sweet to hurt that way. 

I will always always love when authors take their time telling a story. It’s a gift to be able to do this without making the book too long or causing it to lag in places. I didn’t have any fault with the pace of this book. It picks you up and takes you on this lovely, very visual, highly emotional yet gentle ride. I felt all the feels. And the language, the imagery was simply stunning. 

I loved how the two stories converged and then disconnected with only the very smallest tether left at the end. Wonderfully written. 

My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐