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A review by carolinetew
Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb
4.0
3.5/5
I loved the premise of this one: in the contemporary timeline an academic is asked to review the draft of a long-lost symphony by a famous composer. We also get the historical timeline, showing how that composer came to lose that music and his rise to fame. I enjoyed the ride, but I will admit that I knew how it all went down almost immediately. The first chunk is in the present timeline and the moment we flipped back in time and were introduced to all the characters it was immediately clear what happened. It's unclear to me what point the author intended readers to catch on, but I'm suspicious it was obvious to me before the author would have wanted. It's a bit of a long book (+400!) for it to be so straightforward after 100 pages. However, I just enjoyed the journey and devoured this long audiobook in 24 hours so I don't really have many complaints. Once again, I like Slocumb's work and while they are likely going to be categorized as mysteries/thrillers or whatever, I think you have to approach it realizing that element (or the twist, at least) isn't going to be the part that knocks it out of the park.
I loved the premise of this one: in the contemporary timeline an academic is asked to review the draft of a long-lost symphony by a famous composer. We also get the historical timeline, showing how that composer came to lose that music and his rise to fame. I enjoyed the ride, but I will admit that I knew how it all went down almost immediately. The first chunk is in the present timeline and the moment we flipped back in time and were introduced to all the characters it was immediately clear what happened. It's unclear to me what point the author intended readers to catch on, but I'm suspicious it was obvious to me before the author would have wanted. It's a bit of a long book (+400!) for it to be so straightforward after 100 pages. However, I just enjoyed the journey and devoured this long audiobook in 24 hours so I don't really have many complaints. Once again, I like Slocumb's work and while they are likely going to be categorized as mysteries/thrillers or whatever, I think you have to approach it realizing that element (or the twist, at least) isn't going to be the part that knocks it out of the park.