Reviews with content warning for Confinement - Symphony of Secrets

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Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb

14 reviews

beepbeep101's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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fkshg8465's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This had a little bit of everything for me, and I loved the ending. I’m always rooting for the underdog, so for me, while the historical events were awful, I loved how Josephine got all that she wanted, even if that wasn’t how she wanted to get it.

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onegalonelife27's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Schloub has done it again, weaving a musical mystery! I truly enjoyed this one.

One day, Dr. Bern Hendrix gets a mysterious call from the spokeswoman of the Frederick Delaney foundation, founded by one of America’s famous composers, to come over to their office. When we are introduced to Frederick Delaney and his work, I honestly got a bit jealous. I would love to hear this music talked about, especially the masterpiece “Five Rings of Olympia” an opera in five parts Delaney wrote. Yet with the last one, “Red”, the original draft was lost and Delaney could only write a subpar version afterwards. Yet almost a century of its disappearance, the first draft is found and The Delaney Foundation wants Bern to transcribe and make it performance ready. One thing that makes it tricky is the series of drawings, known as Delaney doodles, are used to indicate how certain parts are to be played. So he asked one Eboni Washington, computer expert and former colleague of his to help look over the drafts, hoping to decipher the doodles. Together they discover that the doodles, and perhaps the music itself, are tied to a Josephine Reed, a Black woman barely mentioned in the foundation’s archives. So thus the search for Josephine Reed starts.

Just as the modern duo are left with more questions than answers, we get a shift back in time to meet Frederick “Freddy” Delaney. A young man with a love of music and ambition, but who lacks talents to match that. After one event, he happens to meet “Crazy Jo”, Josephine, a neurodiverse Black woman, and after hearing her play, he begs for lessons. Soon enough, his talent takes off and a friendship begins. However, when he discovers her own talent for composing songs, he wastes no time in transcribing and putting his name on the music, claiming music by a Black woman wouldn’t sell. For a while, this arrangement works for both of them. Yet the more and more famous Delaney now “Fred” gets, the more and more pressure he puts on Josephine to keep coming up with music that she doesn’t get credit for…

And just as Bern and Eboni discover the role Josephine had in the music, the Delaney Foundation begins to crack down on the both of them, wanting everything they found on Josephine and will do whatever it takes…

With the point of view split between Bern in modern times and Delaney and Josephine’s in the late 1910s to early 1920s, we get tensions on both sides. Bern basically worships Delaney, due the Foundation helping underprivileged kids get a chance music, known as Delaney kids. Bern is one of those and has focused his life to studying Delaney work. Yet not only discovering his idol is not who he thought he was, but also facing the tactics the foundation pulls to halt his research on Josephine. Bern’s arc is gripping as we see someone more starry-eyed about the world, slowly realizing harsh truths but not letting that stop him from revealing the truth, especially with Eboni at his side, no matter what. Delaney starts out as a kid with a dream, trying to make it in the big city, and does really care for Josephine at the beginning, and Josephine is at first overwhelmed but happy to have the stability and chances to hear music Delaney gives her. Yet as “Delaney” music grows more and more popular, we see a devolution? Character regression? Not sure what the proper term for what Delaney goes through to become the man he becomes, but it is interesting. And Josephine’s own story is both inspiring and heartbreaking, I’ll say that, the ending provides catharsis for both Bern and Josephine.

If you like a different kind of mystery, complex characters, and overall justice prevailing and righting the wrongs of history, I highly recommend this one!

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spuriousdiphthongs's review

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challenging mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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scmiller's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

3.75

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evanmcomer's review

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dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Slocumb describes “Symphony of Secrets” as a musical thriller. However, the slow pace of the plot and the rushed pay-off at the end made this book just OK for me.

Let’s start with the good. For me, the strongest parts of Slocumb’s book were the chapters set in the 1920s. The author clearly did a lot of research and had a good feel for setting. The characters in that part of the book were richer and more fully drawn. And Josephine, who is neurodivergent, was written with significant care and depth. The book shines brightest when it’s in historical-fiction mode.

As for the bad, this book’s plot felt stagnant. It really only felt like a “thriller” in the last third. The rest seemed like set-up. The portions of the book written in modern times were slow, and Bern and Eboni were both less interesting than Josephine and Fred. Bern’s character arc, where he tries to navigate the internal politics of and comes to terms with the realities of the philanthropic organization for which he works, felt boring. The interesting parts of Eboni’s storyline all seem to happen off page. This meant that, for me, some of the big reveals that happened at the end of the book felt unearned.

As I said above, it wasn’t until about the last third of the novel that “Symphony of Secrets” lurched into the thriller genre. We see Fred’s psychological manipulation of Josephine transform into physical abuse. This all builds to Fred murdering Josephine and another music publisher in the final chapters of the book. That was also a deeply unsatisfactory development tor me. I never had any sense of justice or closure from this part of the story. The nuance that Slocumb used to show how Fred manipulated and gaslit Josephine at the beginning of the book fell by the wayside, and Fred spent the last part of the story being little more than a cartoon villain. Reading the end, it felt like the plot that Slocumb spent so much time setting up became too much for him to handle, so he opted for the most abrupt, shocking ending he could think of.

The Delaney Foundation, which Slocumb paints as a corrupt philanthropy project, was so exaggerated that it took me out of the story. If Kurt Delaney started twisting his mustache at some point in the book, I would not have been surprised. This really boils down to a problem of stakes. The basic conceit of the plot—a musical historian discovers that a famous composer stole his most famous works from a black woman–was strong enough. Giving the philanthropy trying to cover up that discovery the kind of reach that they could buy off the NYPD, pay criminals to hunt down the main character, and manufacture criminal charges against him ratcheted things up to a high enough level that I was no longer able to suspend my disbelief. While things like police corruption and the racism inherent in white philanthropy are real, a book about intellectual property theft doesn’t seem like the proper forum to address them. My brain just could not make sense of the idea that a nonprofit foundation would go to such extremes to protect a piece of classical sheet music—one that it intended to release to the public anyway!

Many of my negative feelings about the ending stem from Slocumb’s treatment of Josephine. While I think Slocumb wrote Josephine well by-and-large, he does give savant-like properties to her neurodivergence, which is a stereotype that is harmful to people living with Autism Spectrum Disorder and other conditions. And to make matters worse, he uses the richness of her character to set up her death. He wanted us to love Josephine and to see her complexities, only so he could make her a victim. Josephine really doesn’t get to tell her own story; she’s there so that Fred, Bern, and Eboni can tell it.

3.25⭐️

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znvisser's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Sometimes I read a premise that I am so intrigued by, I am fairly certain I am going to love the book - so once the writing doesn’t disappoint my tastes in early chapters, I know I’m in for a great ride. Symphony of Secrets definitely delivered for me, but eesh this book stressed me out and raised my heart rate at times. Fred Delaney is a completely terrible character and despite my annoyance I couldn’t stop reading. Every time he says “swell” I was reminded of Mad Men’s Pete Campbell so well, that’s the vibe, but then more successfully evil. In this story Delaney is introduced to this brilliant woman, Josephine, and exploits her labour in any way he can while claiming it is actually she who benefits from their arrangement. This goes from very bad to even worse. Delaney himself is however so utterly unworthy of any praise or fame for his musicality, that he is not even able to hear the differences between his composed and stolen work, remaining completely stunned every time he disappoints just any mediocre critic or musician around him. And unfortunately as time goes on he grows unsurprisingly more obnoxious.

For all the things I loved about this book - the premise and plot, the two timelines and of course Josephine and her mind and experiencing music with her - there were two smaller things I didn’t love: the pacing (Bern and Eboni take so much time to unravel small bits of history, then they are on the run and there is no one they can EVER ask for help, and then suddenly

they got all details right and are lawyered up?!

) and the romantic angle (the tension was understandable but the writing once it happens was cringe and it didn’t really add much to it all). However, luckily neither really affected my love for this book.

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lizzym126's review

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dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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emilb's review

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adventurous challenging emotional inspiring mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

I enjoyed this book and it definitely made me cry. This is the authors second book and it shows in places, when it comes to certain stylistic choices and small stumbles new authors typically make. I don't mean that in a negative way, it's completely natural.

However, the amount of love, authenticity, knowledge, research and compassion that went into this book made me not care about the occasionally clumsy writing at all. On top of that, the character voices are so well done and so distinct, that it's a joy to follow along. It made my heart bleed for Josephine as her life slowly unfolds before us. The style and voice in which the historical bits were written were especially gripping, loved every minute of it.

I enjoyed this book a lot, and I'm definitely looking forward to more by Mr. Slocumb.

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leslie_overbookedsocialworker's review

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mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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