Book Review: Sing Me Forgotten

Sing Me Forgotten

Jessica S. Olson

4/5

Isda has lived in the shadows of an opera house her entire life. Haunting the rafters, pillaging the dressing rooms after sets to take leftover props. Raised by the opera house owner to never reveal herself, she has never expected anything more. She is a gravoir, cursed from birth with terrifying abilities that make her kind nearly extinct through persecution. Though she longs to perform on stage, she knows that the closest she could possibly get is through coaching a young singer to stardom. As she craves more and more measures of such freedom, she finds that there's a reason that so many people fear her kind. 

This is a Phantom of the Opera retelling(?) kind of, but I really feel like it's almost a Phantom Hunchback fusion and it's gender swapped. It's very original as it takes elements of a very established story and twists them to being fantastical and much more romantic. But the foundation for Phantom is the darkness within and the inability to ignore the dangerous call of music, the same as the foundation for this book mixed in with some magic. Also the idea of obsession and fixation and a desire for power. It's a lot to deal with in this short 330 page standalone, but I think that it really covers a lot of emotion.

I wish that it had been more developed, there were many elements that were just kind of dropped and expected for us to understand and go with. All of the symbols and everything, haphazard at best. There's a whole revolution that is mentioned in passing and then not brought up again. I know that's the risk with standalones, they aren't really designed to answer all of your questions and they leave you wanting more. But it detracted a bit from the impact of the societal factors of the fallout. 

Still though, it was a pretty amazing book. I loved the world, the romance, and the conflicts of morality than ran through it all. I think that it could be enjoyable for people who just like a good fantasy but also for fans of the Phantom of the Opera, because I know the retellings are few and far between. A tiny bit of a spoiler to close with, the ending might drive you a little crazy.