I was intrigued to pick this up because of the musical theme. As a child and teenager, I played piano and violin. I was involved in music clubs and orchestras at school, and I took private piano lessons. It was a daydream to attend a music school or have this be a larger part of my education. 

While reading my first book by Susan Currie I was captivated by Iz as a female protagonist. She is strong-willed and good intentioned. I was rooting her from Chapter 6 onwards as I could feel how badly she wanted to attend the Metier School and her natural talent translated well off the page. 

I think the author did a great job of bringing the challenges of growing up in the foster care system to light. Other main themes included found family, and also abuse, anxiety, panic, mental illness, trauma, PTSD (which weren’t addressed in a heavy way in my opinion - rather lightly touched on and included).

My critique of this book is that it would be very hard for a reader who has no musical background to grasp a lot of the terminology and concepts presented by the theme. I don’t think I could recommend this book to a wide range of YA readers because of that. However, it would be an enjoyable read with a soft romance and a demonstration of varying family and friend relationships for a YA reader interested in music.