3.5 stars

Rune Germain has a gift of a beautiful, powerful singing voice but it's only a curse, leaving her feeling sick and faint after every performance. Rune is sent to Roseblood, a special school dedicated to the art of opera, in Paris, France, which has a link to the legendary Phantom of the Opera. Rune becomes obsessed with the legend, convinced she is seeing and hearing her very own phantom.

I quite enjoyed this. It took me a while to get properly stuck into the book and its story but I think that was just because of me and not necessarily anything wrong with the book. I don't much about the Phantom of the Opera. I haven't read the book, and I've only ever seen snippets of the movie but I think I knew enough to really enjoy this book and how AG Howard made it her own.

First off, I loved the setting - not only Paris but the whole setup of Roseblood. The idea of this huge, kind of creepy school seeped in opera is literally something you'd only find in a story and the images i had of it in my mind were great. The stage, the classes and its weird teachers, the taxidermy, the dark, candle-lit canteen. I just really loved it. I really think that AG Howard did a fantastic job wrapping the reader into the story through all these elements, from the school, the underground caverns, the garden. She took a lot of what is famous about the phantom and placed them into a different setting, twisting them so the story became original and able to stand on its own.

The mystery behind Rune and her voice was pretty great once I understood it. I did feel it took a bit too much time, and I got frustrated being left in the dark and hearing cryptic comments between Thorn and Erik but once I found out, everything made sense then. Rune and Thorn's relationship had some problems for me, more so that there was a bit of insta-love (I know, I know, twin flame and all that but still!). Rune seemed to fall for Thorn so easily and I feel like they didn't have that much conversation before literally bonding to each other forever (!!). However, despite all that, it was very easy to get swept into their relationship and their love for one another. This book is written in a very poetic way and some of the writing is very flowery and I think that helped the over the top relationship between Thorn and Rune.

I think everything wrapped up very neatly and the way it was wrapped up (with Rune going person to person to update the reader on each individual) reminded me of how a movie wraps up. It was a little bit too neat but for the type of story it was, I didn't mind it too much.