Grace, violin virtuoso, wants to study music but her controlling mum wants her to follow the sciences. Crux, talented spray artist, just wants to make street art but his supportive dad doesn't want him getting in trouble. One day in 2020, amid rising COVID cases, Crux decides to paint Grace after she goes viral playing her violin and their worlds intersect...

I enjoyed this YA verse novel a whole lot more than I expected to. I admit I picked it up thinking I was just ticking off an obligation read after being gifted this one. When I realised it was heavily set in that weird twilight zone of the onset of the pandemic, I was nervous at first - I don't usually like to read about that time. But somehow this book managed to get through all my skepticism with its gentle, slice of life story that really hit the mark for me.

I know I'm not the only one who avoids the pandemic setting. But as I read, I realised that we do actually need books that capture the true nature of that surreal experience. And this book does do it very well. I kept thinking about someone reading this 20-30 years from now who didn't live through it, and thinking to themselves - "no, surely it wasn't quite like that, surely this is a bit exaggerated, surely people weren't forced to stay in their houses, surely the middle of vibrant Melbourne wasn't really a ghost town...". But of course it WAS like that and it is actually important that how that time FELT is captured for posterity and I really think this book does that.

This was the book that finally made verse novels click for me. Before now, I had expected verse to be poetry. I somehow had acquired the expectation that a verse novel should be a collection of standalone poems that together tell a story. I don't know where I got that idea. But this one made it click that verse novels are not poetry or prose but something in between. Once I realised that, I was able to fully enjoy this as much as it deserved.

I enjoyed the underlying message about following the thing that really calls to your soul, and also about the place of art and music in a society that became a little obsessed with who is or isn't "essential".

As mentioned, I would consider this a more gentle, slice of life type story than being plot heavy, but it's also very engaging and easy to read.  Even with the setting, the story just gave me overall GoodVibes(tm) and I'm super impressed that it is a debut.