Variation

Variation is a 2024 romance novel by Rebecca Yarros (Fourth Wing, Iron Flame). It follows the story of Allie Rousseau, a ballet prodigy whose life is saved by Hudson Ellis as he is training to become a rescue swimmer. A decade later, their paths cross again as Allie rehabilitates from a potentially career-ending injury. The novel examines the impact that their shared histories and their love for each other has on their careers, their dreams, and their families. It explores themes of The Balance Between Personal and Professional Dreams, The Pressures of Athletic Excellence, and The Power of Love to Heal and Transform.

This guide uses the first paperback edition of the novel published by Montlake in 2024.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of suicidal ideation, physical and emotional abuse, sexual content, cursing, illness, and death. In particular, the novel explores the effects of frontotemporal dementia and primary progressive aphasia on people and their loved ones.

Plot Summary

Allessandra “Allie” Rousseau is a 16-year-old girl vacationing with her family in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She is from New York City, where she and her sisters, Lina and Eva, are aspiring ballet dancers. Her older sister Anne was formerly a dancer but now works for the Metropolitan Ballet Company, the same ballet company for which their mother, Sophie, was once a principal dancer. Each year, her family comes to Cape Cod to participate in the Haven Cove Classic, a ballet competition that showcases local talent. While the Classic is a world-famous event thanks in great part to Sophie’s work, the Rousseau family is vilified by many Cape Cod locals for their excessive wealth and arrogance.

Allie and Eva take the family’s boat out onto the ocean, where it capsizes. They are saved by Hudson Ellis, a 17-year-old local who is training to become a Coast Guard rescue diver. He immediately falls in love with Allie, and the two become best friends over the next two summers.

At the end of the second summer, Allie and Lina are in a car accident after the Classic. Lina dies, while Allie survives. She remembers very little of the crash, other than Lina giving her their grandmother’s ring and telling her to protect their sisters. After the crash, Hudson leaves for basic training without saying goodbye.

Ten years later, Allie is the primary principal dancer of the Metropolitan Ballet Company. As she performs in Giselle, a play loved by Lina and her mother, she searches for Hudson in the crowd. Although she has not seen him in 10 years, she still saves a seat for him at every performance. On her final turn, she tears her Achilles tendon.

Allie goes to Cape Cod to rehabilitate away from the Company. She hopes to return in the fall to perform in a new play, Equinox, which was written just for her. However, she becomes distracted from rehabilitation by the response to her injury on social media.

Meanwhile, Hudson has become a rescue diver. Although he wanted to be stationed in Alaska, he chose Cape Cod to be near his sister, Caroline, and her adopted daughter, June. One day, June tells him that Allie is back. Although June wants to be a ballet dancer, Caroline refuses to let her. June convinces Hudson that if her mother meets Allie, she will see that Allie is a good person and let June pursue ballet.

Hudson takes June to meet Allie but is surprised when his niece tells her that she is her biological daughter. Confused, Hudson apologizes and takes June home. However, June leaves a DNA test with Allie, which she takes out of curiosity. Allie finds out that June is Lina’s daughter.

Allie wants to help June become a dancer, and she and Hudson decide to pretend to be dating. Their hope is that Caroline will get to know Allie and agree to let June study ballet with her. Over the next several weeks, Allie and Hudson struggle with their history together. In particular, Allie finds it hard to forgive Hudson for leaving her without a goodbye 10 years ago. However, they finally agree to fully commit to their summer relationship with the knowledge that it will not survive when they return to their regular lives.

Allie and Hudson let her sister Anne in on their secret, and the three work together to solve the mystery of who June’s father is. Meanwhile, June’s plan with Caroline begins to work, as Caroline grows to like Allie and understand her life as a ballet dancer.

Allie’s best friend, Kenna, who is the Company’s doctor, visits and reveals that Vasily, the Company’s director, has cast Allie’s sister for the lead role Allie was promised in Equinox. Allie is devasted and decides to dedicate the next several weeks to training, rehabilitating, and proving that she is worthy of the lead role. At the Classic, Allie performs a dance from Equinox and shocks the crowd with her recovery. Afterward, Vasily gives the lead role to her, insisting that Eva implied that Allie would not be fully recovered in time.

Hudson and Caroline attend the Classic as well, and when June takes the stage in the youth competition, Caroline is upset. She explains to Hudson and Allie why she never wanted June to take ballet: The adoption paperwork contained a clause that strictly prohibited it. She is now afraid that June’s father will attempt to take June because she violated the terms of the adoption.

Allie realizes that June’s father must be someone famous if he wanted her to stay out of ballet. She deduces that Vasily is the father and reasons that Sophie and Lina must have used June’s birth to extort the Company to secure Lina’s role as a principal dancer. Allie enlists Eva—as recompence for stealing Allie’s role—to confront him.

At the Company’s yacht party after the Classic, Allie and Eva go to Vasily’s office. Allie presents him with what she has learned, then gives him two envelopes. The first is a set of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) signed by everyone who knows that he is June’s father, and the second ends his parental rights. Vasily admits that Lina and their mother used the information to extort him and agrees to sign the document. He begs Allie to sign a new contract with the Company, and she tells him that she will consider it. 

A noise outside the office interrupts their conversation, and Allie finds June eavesdropping. When June turns to run, she falls into the ocean. Allie jumps in after her. June is devasted by what she overheard, but Allie tells her that Lina made a mistake by using June as leverage. She promises that everyone loves her. Hudson arrives in a rescue boat.

Finally, Hudson confesses the truth about what happened 10 years earlier. Allie’s memories are wrong: Hudson, not Lina, saved her from the burning car. He tried to save Lina, too, but the car exploded. Afterward, Sophie convinced him that Allie would blame him for Lina’s death if he stayed. Allie is devasted by how everyone has lied to her about the accident. She breaks up with Hudson, insisting that she can no longer trust him.

Allie, Anne, and Eva go to confront their mother. Sophie has dementia and aphasia and is living in an assisted care facility. Allie asks her to confirm or deny what Allie says. Allie tells her that she knows the truth about the accident and how Sophie forced Hudson to keep it a secret by threatening to blame him. Sophie confirms Allie’s suspicions. Allie leaves, finally feeling like she is free of her mother’s influence.

Allie realizes that her dream and Hudson’s dream will never fit into the same world and decides to pursue her ballet career with the Company. She leaves for New York and starts practicing for Equinox in the fall. Hudson follows a few days later, hoping to convince her to come back. However, when he sees her entering the studio with the other dancers, he decides to let her pursue her dream. He asks to be reassigned and is sent to Alaska.

Allie is still uncertain about whether she wants to work with the Company and refuses to sign her contract. A few days before the Equinox premier, she talks with Kenna and realizes that she would rather be a freelance dancer than continue in the Company’s toxic environment. She drives to Alaska and tells Hudson. She forgives him for not telling her about Lina sooner, and the two agree to stay together in Alaska.

Five years later, Allie and Hudson are married and live in Washington for Hudson’s new assignment. Anne lives in Cape Cod and helps Caroline raise June. They go to see June perform at the Metropolitan Opera House, where she performs a perfect routine.