4.5 stars! An awesome retelling of The Phantom of the Opera!!! The changes add a whole new perspective to the narrative. There was always room for sympathy for the original Phantom: he was soulful, desperately lonely, and ostracized for superficial reasons. His social maladjustment is tragic. BUT his predatory behavior - both grooming Christine and murdering folks at the opera - inevitably condemns his story to be "Psycho: The Musical!" But Isda, our new Phantom, her anger, her jealousy, her longing and lust, her deceptions, her need for social acceptance AND her disdain of that same society, her acts of rebellion, her experimentation with drugs and struggle with addiction, even her violent outbursts and acts of vandalism, are all just... part of being a troubled teen. She is Cinderella, and Ariel, and Aurora, and Jasmine, and Rapunzel, and every princess we were ever trained to idolize. AND -Isda is up against a racist society which wants to obliterate her simply for existing. My biggest regret is that this book made Isda a pale red-head, because it would have hit SO HARD if this fantasy faux-France had a stigma against faux-Middle Easternish folks, and forced them to cover up based on their appearance or misunderstood religion, or scapegoated them for an uptick of violence in the city. HOW is Isda not a PoC?! Every line she had about wanting to be dutiful, but ultimately feeling betrayed when good behavior didn't garner change or respect, and how she felt /forced/ to commit violence - at times even relished it - just to be Heard and Seen - her whole story SCREAMED #BlackLivesMatter to me. Or, you know, #MuslimGirlsMatter. I really wanted one more turn of the screw! But regardless, Isda's story hits threefold: A survivor of abuse taking back her power; a teenage girl's awakening; and an Other fighting to be considered an Equal. Standing ovation Isda!!!

But for all that I just compared her to the original Phantom, the characters in Sing Me Forgotten are not a perfect 1:1 rehash. In fact, they're all mash-ups, and I am HERE for it! Isda is equal parts Phantom + Christine. Emeric is Christine + Raoul. Cyril is all the opera owners and father figures, including The Phantom, combined. All of the original architecture is there - the orphaned and deceived ingenue; the covetous and capricious tutor; the opera house's violent and reclusive judge - but everyone takes a turn playing out a portion of the story. Sing Me Forgotten is like a masquerade ball where everyone swaps masks as they swap dancing partners. But the /characterization/ and theme is intact! It's like when a book-to-screen adaptation happens, and the book is quoted by a different character (I mean, how many of Dumbledore's pearls of wisdom are given to Hermione in the movies XD). The story of The Phantom of the Opera is all there, but it means something new when The Phantom or Christine's insights echo from all echelon's of society. There IS a specter haunting faux-France: It's Racism, and Greed, and an entitled patriarchy that thrives on hurting invisible little girls. One of the sad truths about The Phantom of the Opera is that all of the cast besides the Phantom are rather flat: Christine is a doe-eyed damsel, Raoul is a white knight, etc. But Sing Me Forgotten is a more human book: Everyone has a deeper layer that haunts them, everyone struggles with their own metaphorical Phantom, everyone has a choice to make between empathy and growth or self-pity and destruction. This was a really intricate dance Jessica S. Olson did, creating rich and sympathetic characters while also honoring their inspiration, and I am EXTREMELY proud of the end result!!! JSO is definitely a force to follow!

Praise where praise is due, but that said, this IS a debut novel, and it reads as such XD. Some of the lines were hyperbolic, or clunky. For example, I LOVE this line; it's even on the cover of the book! "Destruction is a music all its own. One composed of drumbeats and a percussion of passion and pain." She had it, she had the perfect line... and then she wrote too much XD. It only needed to be "Destruction is a music all its own: a percussion of passion and pain." Bam! Done, feelings evoked, message achieved, nice and succinct! Just little things throughout, little tightening moments, that would have elevated this book from a 4.5 to a full 5.

Also, the last 100 pages get a bit dumb XD. I don't know if this is a symptom of the author trying to translate the hunt for The Phantom, or is just a debut novel's shaky attempt at a big action sequence and that awkwardness would ware off with future writing... BUUUUUT.... Emeric has less than 24 hours before he loses his sense of self forever because MAGIC, and Isda WASTES every opportunity to bring him the magic potions that could save him! In fact, she drinks all the potions herself! Yes, there is subtext here about how addiction is a selfish monster that steers you away from making empathetic choices, buuuuuuut from a strictly plot-based, non-metaphorical, subtext-ignoring stance... it was reeeeeally annoying to watch Isda dither around not-France instead of rescuing the person she allegedly loves.

All in all, this book left me feeling like Isda: Hungry and longing for more! I cannot wait to see what Jessica S. Olson writes next, and I will be /singing/ praises for Sing Me Forgotten for a LONG time! <3 <3 <3