Book Review: Limelight by Andrew Keenan-Bolger

Official Synopsis: The only thing standing between Danny and his dreams is…everything.

For fifteen years, Danny Victorio has kept his head down, kept his mouth shut, and kept everyone out. But an audition for Manhattan’s most prestigious arts school offers him a chance to escape Staten Island—and his crumbling family—for good.

If he doesn’t screw everything up.

At LaGuardia High School of the Performing Arts, Danny is thrust into a world of fierce talent and even fiercer ambition. As he navigates overwhelming expectations, the ghosts of his past, and, for the first time, real friendship, Danny can’t shake the question: Where do I belong…if I belong at all?

Set against the gritty, vibrant backdrop of 1996 New York City—where peep-show palaces were giving way to Disney stores, the “Club Kids” ruled nightlife, and a musical called Rent was driving teens to sleep on the seediest sidewalks of Times Square in hopes of a ticket—Limelight is a story about finding your voice, finding your family, and figuring out who, and where, you’re really meant to be.

Limelight is a novel about learning who you are while also learning how you fit in the world, even if that means changing your ideas of what the world was or should be. Danny is living in a small apartment with his mom after they leave their dad, the apartment was formerly owned by his uncle, one of the only people Danny feels close with even though he is passed. Danny's uncle left behind a large stack of cassette tapes, a lot of which were Broadway recordings and tracks. These tapes have brought comfort to Danny, confirming in him something that he really wants, to perform. But when he doesn't tell his mom about the audition, and by some miracle gets in, he now has to prove to himself, his classmates and his mom that he is meant to be at this school. Set with the background of 1990s New York and a city that is full of both love and chaos, Danny is trying to find where he belongs in all of this, especially when he starts to feel things for his classmate, Christian, that he hasn't felt for someone else before.

One thing that is really evident in this book is how important this era of New York was to the author and his own story and journey. The author is an actor on Broadway, and you can see the love from Broadway, and the arts in general, within this story. I loved that deep connection with the 'new' musical Rent and the how it connected all the students but also helped Danny understand more of the world around him. Danny, being from Staten Island, is definitely closed off from a lot of the more intense scenes, and watching him navigate the things he was told versus the things he was witnessing was really great journey. I think we all at some point in our teens start to realize that maybe everything our parents told us isn't the 100% truth, and sometimes the things that scare our parents might open their arms to us.

As Danny starts to navigate his own internal thoughts and feelings we get to see him go through regrets and also question how to be better than the adults in his own life. He has seen his dad be abusive towards his mom, and has seen how alcohol impacts his dad's emotions and actions and yet still has to explore how those things effect him. We also see he has a deep fear of becoming his dad and how he learns to deal with some of the things he just has to accept, that we are all both of our parents but we can always choose to be better. As Danny grows within the arts school, we also get to see his journey into self acceptance, into maybe now understanding why he has feelings for Christian instead of Nina, who would make sense on paper. We also get to see his love and confidence in singing and performing grow.

One of my favorite plot lines in this story is seeing Christian grow as a background character and love interest, especially when we see Danny and friends at Christian's first drag show. Christian is a character who directly pushes everything Danny thought he believed and you can see how that helps Danny grow throughout the story. That being said, there are moments in this book where you can see the underlying homophonic emotions that filled the 90s and the pain the AIDS epidemic caused families and friend groups. I think that's why having Rent be a main musical focus for the friend group was really great, it showed a lot about how true that story was and how those were the lives of real people in the city at the time.

This book does cover a lot of heavy topics so that would be something to look into if you don't think you can handle it. There are moments of abuse and homophobia as well as Danny's internalized homophobia that bring a lot out of the plot and move the story along. This book is definitely a powerful one with a great setting.

I rated this book 4 out of 5 stars!

Limelight comes out February 24, 2026!

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