I recently read Frequency by Christopher Krovatin. I absolutely loved it. It kept me interested from the very first chapter until the very end. I was fortunate enough to receive a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Fiona is an 18 year old girl who lives in a small town and has a secret. When she was nine years old, she saw her father and a few of the town council members beat a boy half to death. It changed the way that she felt about her father — and her small town — forever.
When the boy comes back into the town, everybody seems enamored by his music — except Fiona. It turns out, this boy is enamored with her. Fiona ends up distancing herself from her friends; in the process, she discovers that her friends — and herself — are in danger. Can she save her friends?
Frequency is infused with music. This may be one of the reasons why it struck such a chord with me. Fiona is always listening to one band or another; I used to be almost a walking encyclopedia of music (if I hadn’t been going into the military after college, my music recording professor would have offered me a job in his recording studio). We both play instruments. This book mentions a lot of bands and uses a lot of musical jargon.
While Frequency is primarily a contemporary novel, there is a bit of magic involved in this story. Music has an ancient magical power here (in reality, doesn’t it actually have some sort of power?). I love watching those shows where they discuss ancient mysteries like figurines that look like airplanes from ancient Peru or computers from ancient Greece; the ancient power of music in this story reminds me a bit of that. The magic added to the allure of this story for me.
This story is geared towards young adults, but I would recommend it for the older range of the YA spectrum, probably 15/16+. Several of Fiona’s friends are into drugs, and there are frequent mentions of sex in this story (although nothing is actually explicitly described on the page). Most of the characters are 18 or older. Frequency could also be categorized as NA instead of YA. It was probably a marketing decision since YA tends to be more popular at the moment.
If you enjoy YA contemporaries and you love music, I highly recommend this book. I absolutely loved it.
Oooo I was hoping to read and review Frequency, but chose not to request it since I’m already busy with all the books, haha. I’m glad you enjoyed this one, and it’s nice to hear there is a lot of music jargon involved as well – it makes the music feel more involved with the book rather than a cover to get people interested only to give something else instead.
Sophia @ Bookwyrming Thoughts recently posted…Perfect Harmony by Emily Albright | Musical and Cute
I know what you mean about declining to request books. So far, I haven’t gotten to the point where I request so many books that I can’t keep up with them, but only because I make sure that I read one ARC before I request another (or wait until I’m pretty sure they’re going to deny me, if they ever get around to answering my request).
Looks like you read another musical book though. I was thinking about requesting Perfect Harmony, but never got around to it.