SWAN SONG

A dancer and a Russian oligarch move in and out of each other’s lives as they search for their happily-ever-afters in Regnery’s romance.

Ballerina Sasha Collins is in her dressing room when she makes eye contact with the performance center’s young janitor, Vaughn Cigno, for the first time—it feels like she’s been hit with a lightning bolt. Though the two have barely interacted before, they become fast friends, meeting to discuss books of poetry and going to the movies; she even invites him to meet her family. Together, Sasha and Vaughn can shut out the world and its stresses and just be happy in each other’s presence. It’s all Vaughn could have ever hoped for—he’s been an unwanted foster kid for most of his life with no plans or hope of being anything more than an awkward, mostly-silent, manual laborer. When he finds out from a former foster parent that she always had suspicions that he had been the victim of a kidnapping, the news rocks him and changes the course of his life forever. Against all odds, Vaughn finds evidence supporting her story: He is actually Ivan Stepanov, the son of a Russian oligarch who had been kidnapped while on a family outing. Vaughn is determined to shed his lowly status and reclaim his identity as Ivan—until a chance encounter with Sasha years later makes him realize that Vaughn may have been right about some things. In this reimagining of the classic “Ugly Duckling” fairy tale, Regnery gives readers two leads who are easy to root for. The story is told via Vaughn and Sasha’s alternating points of view, with some time jumps between parts. The author effectively conveys how Vaughn changes into Ivan and how meeting Sasha again brings out the goodness inside of him, deftly limning the contrast between the two versions of himself (“My shoes are Cavalli, but wearing nice things doesn’t turn a duck into a swan”). The love story is beautiful, but the characterizations are what make this romance narrative truly stand out.

A charming contemporary romance.