[I was given an ARC preview copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review of the book.]

I have been a figure skating fan for nearly forty years now, which puts my earliest memories of watching skating in the mid-80s. I have attended US National championships, world championships, and several grand prix events over the past thirty years.

When I received this book, I was very excited about learning the "behind the scenes" of the skating world during this very popular era.

Each chapter sets the scene for the year in question; a nice touch for putting our mind in the time period. After this, there are comments about retirements from the previous seasons, changes made by the ISU, etc.

Information is given about the Canadian and US National championships, as well as details about skating tours, other international competitions, results, and culminating with the world championships of each season. The information is simply that -- information. Not as much "behind the scenes" as I had hoped. That being said, the reading was very slow for me, because the author's style made me want to look up different performances that were mentioned. Each chapter took hours to read, simply because I would then find videos, music, and look up related information online.

This is an excellent jumping off point for discovering the best of the 80s.

I was working from a PDF copy of the book. There were typos that should be corrected before the final printing, I hope. In addition, it would simplify reading if the author used paragraphs more efficiently rather than a large block of text to discuss an entire competition.

I enjoyed this book very much and would highly recommend it to any skating fan as a reference to have in their figure skating library. ( )