[I received a free electronic review copy of this book from Netgalley and Aladdin in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.]
Summary
Monica Garcia and her abuelita head to New York when Monica is cast as an understudy for a Broadway musical called Our Time showing at the Ethel Merman Theater. On their way to the hotel after their flight, they stop by the theater to take a peek only to see an ambulance leaving. Monica is no longer an understudy – now, she’s a lead.
And that’s because something is going on at the Ethel Merman Theater. Accidents. Injuries. Actors and crew scared off the production. This is Monica’s big break, but she’s starting to wonder if the show will even happen. So she and her castmates start investigating.
Review
Sadly, this didn’t click for me. Monica is a solid protagonist. I enjoyed her relationship with her grandmother a lot. But there’s little character development beyond Monica, even though all four kids starring in the show work on investigating the goings on at the theater. Also, while the story is in third person point of view (POV) and Monica is the POV character, the reader is randomly fed information and details about the other characters that Monica couldn’t know and that aren’t revealed through dialogue. At best, it’s an example of more telling than showing, and when it happened it pulled me out of the flow of the story. I think the book would have been stronger, all the way around, if we had had all four kids as POV characters. It would have given more character development and would have more naturally conveyed these tidbits of backstory.
I loved the reveal of what caused the theater’s curse and the connections Monica makes to that story by the end. But I wanted more from that part of the book. I wanted it to carry more of the weight. We had far more information on the musical the kids are doing than on the mystery, the clues, and the resolution.
I think theater fans will enjoy the backstage and insider details of this. (The author is a Broadway performer.) But personally, I would recommend something like Upstaged or Broken Strings over this one for fun, engaging musical performance stories with great characters. I’m not sure mystery fans will be satisfied with this one, either. The potential is there, but there are some different directions this might have gone to make it stronger, in my opinion. (Paranormal activity/curses)
Rating: ♥♥½*
*♥♥½ = Mostly solid to solid, some issues but okay overall