Reviews with content warning for Murder - Echo After Echo

Thank you so much to Candlewick Press for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I don't remember giving A.R. Capetta the rights to my biography??

This book follows a fat, queer, Jewish girl who moves to NYC to pursue theatre but ends up being manipulated and abused by a narcissistic and misogynistic director. (Like hello??? How is this not my life story??) Also the MC flirts by quoting Macbeth and mentioning God of Vengeance. I think I’ve been cloned.

Through the narrative of a theatrical murder mystery, this book takes a hard look at the misogyny and manipulation that occurs within theatre spaces, often by male directors and often to young women. It discusses grooming, sexual exploitation, fatphobia, and manipulation. It fantastically illustrates the way that most male directors use their role to exploit their power and traumatize others for the sake of their own artistic integrity. They convince young actors that theatre should be “uncomfortable” and train actors to gaslight themselves into silence, making them believe that they have to choose between their careers or their boundaries.

The specific villain of this story was SO well-written, because I literally know this man. I have known directors that have said some of his lines almost word for word and done some of his actions almost beat for beat. And I’ve known directors that have said and done even worse. I constantly found myself SCREAMING at the text about its terrifying accuracy.

Some of my favorite lines about this:
“He keeps changing the story so she won’t know what to believe - except for him.”

“It’s one thing to know what he’s done, and another to try to get people to believe. So many would find a way to ignore it. To put it in a little compartment in their minds and say, yes, he was a monster, but he made such beautiful things.”

“There’s an emptiness at the heart of his work. He has no idea how to tell a true story. He’s just following the pattern. That’s why he needs his actors to be hollow, to be his. He’s made a little set of puppets to play with, and he uses them to tell the same tired stories over and over again.”

It reminded me greatly of If We Were Villains in the way that it utilized theatrical tropes to emphasize the heightened reality that exists within the arts and to criticize the roles that people are forcefully placed into by those in power so that their role in reality is synonymous with their role as an artist. There is a lot of misogyny and homophobia and racism still very much present in theatre nowadays and this book felt like the perfect anthem to my rage.

The only thing I did not like about it was that I felt that after bringing up these issues and centering the story so much around them, they were essentially dropped at the end for the sake of wrapping up the murder mystery. I had been really hoping for a final message about the empowerment of women in theatrical spaces or a call to action but alas, I was left a little lackluster. However, the time that we did spend on them was MUCH appreciated.

Plus, did I mention it was sapphic?

TW: murder, death, violence, blood, grooming (on-page), adult/minor relationship, r*pe (past, mention), suicide (near attempt, on-page), suicidal thoughts, sexual harassment, emotional abuse/manipulation, drug use, underage drinking, fatphobia, sexism, misogyny, creepy male directors (cuz this should be a TW), sexual content (brief, on-page), grief

Content Warnings

wardenred's review

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dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective 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? Yes

5.0

Being an actor is all about finding keys from the real world that open imaginary locks.

I've always been fascinated with theater. Mostly musical theater and ballet, for some reason—probably because both involve a lot of music, and I can never get enough of music. But "regular" plays, too. So sometimes I find myself drown to books that are set in theaters. Books that show the blurry lines between the glitter of the stage performance, the hard work that goes into making it true, and the feelings that color both sides of the coin.

Echo After Echo is one such book. So recently, after I found myself thinking about theater a little too much after my player's shuffle decided to feed me every Broadway song in my playlist, I couldn't resist the urge to re-read it.

I remember it as a web of beautiful words and growing suspense, and as I cracked the book open, I realized I barely remembered how the central mystery got resolved. All I could recall about the ending were the emotions there, and the images that accompanied them: snow, city lights, water, blood, keys. Of course, as I actually started reading, the memories of the plot gradually returned, but that didn't make the re-read experience any less enjoyable. The story is told with even more beauty and feeling than I remembered, and also with even more flawed, complicated people who, with precisely one exception, keep showing flashes of raw humanity that makes them immensely sympathetic.

In other words, this is exactly the sort of book I never can help falling in love with, even when I'm already familiar with it.

Despite being marketed as a YA thriller/romance, it reads very much like a NA book for me. Probably because Zara, despite being a senior missing her last year of high school to star in Echo and Ariston, is plunged in an adult situation and surrounded mostly by adult people. The setting leaves little room for the usual YA tropes. Even the romance (which, on the second read, somehow seemed more prominent than I remembered it), despite being very much a story of first love and self-discovery and getting told largely in a deceptively innocent fashion, doesn't really feel like a first love. Probably because the way Zara approaches her relationship with Eli is very much the same way she sees her heroine, Echo, approach her tragic romance: she has already carved the space for this love within her, and now the actual person she's with is filling it up. I promise the result is healthier than it sounds. Or at least, it's as healthy as you can expect from a romance that involves someone who is deeply involved in arts and creativity and telling story. It's real and raw and important for its own sake, but it's also a set of real world keys for the imaginary locks. It's a set of experiences to be used on stage. It's a way to tell a different story.

And this is another thing I really enjoyed about this book: how it handles the intersection between the story it tells, and the story the characters are telling inside the book, the play they're staging, the parts they're making sense of. This is something I always enjoy reading about, because stories have always been such a formative part of my life. The recursive experience of reading about fictional people interacting with their own fictional people helps me make sense of my own relationships with the stories I tell and the stories I consume. And stories are for sure my favorite way to make sense of real life. That "keys and locks" thing works both ways—just like this book shows.

Content Warnings

crunchycrystals's review against another edition

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dark tense

2.75

i listened to this on audiobook and was really caught off guard by the constant pov changes and only got used to it midway through. the fact that there’s only one narrator didn’t help. i would’ve DNFd this if i wasn’t interested in finding out the conclusion to the mystery.

Content Warnings

beautifulpaxielreads's review

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challenging emotional mysterious tense 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? Yes

4.0

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