Thank you so much to Anchor Books, Penguin Random House and PRH Audio for an advance copy of this book! 

This book came out on April 18th. 

Brendan Slocumb made me a fan of classical theme books with a mystery! This story is told from two timelines - present day and the early 20s. I really loved the main character Bern and his passion for not only music but the legacy of (fictional) composer Frederick Delaney. But while researching a possibly missing piece of music he learns that the work could possibly be stolen and was actually composed by a young black woman. 

This book had so much in it - the mystery of Josephine Reed, racism, police brutality, power dynamic. Despite the size of the book (almost 500 pages) I thought the pacing was really well done and I wanted to keep going. At one point the POVs shifted and it just made me even more intrigued because of the cliffhangers that would happen at the end of each POV.  Just like with Slocumb's debut, I continued to learn about classical music & it brought me back to music class learning the works of composers.  The detail of how Josephine came up with the music was fascinating. 

In addition to reading the physical book, I paired it with the audio. Perhaps a female narrator was chosen to amplify the silenced Josephine Reed but I thought having two narrators for the male and female characters would have been a great element. With that being said I still thought Chanté McCormick did a great job with the narration. 

I definitely will be checking out more of Brendan's work as he releases as I was impressed by both The Violin Conspiracy and this one.