Guitar Notes by Mary Amato

Tripp, who plays guitar only for himself, and Lyla, a cellist whose talent has already made her famous but not happy, form an unlikely friendship when they are forced to share a practice room at their high school.

My Thoughts:
This started out so cute. Lyla and Tripp are forced to share a music practice room and they begin sharing notes. I loved how their relationship progressed; The notes were adorable and I liked their personalities. Tripp was especially entertaining with his dry sense of humor and strange wit. I think I grinned throughout each interaction they had; Notes, texts, brainstorm pages, lyrics, phone calls. So cute.

And I loved how the story moved along in different formats, not just straight narrative. It made the book unique.

I also loved how the whole book was about music. The characters actually delved into the creative process, which is fun to watch. And the way Tripp and Lyla care about music, their connection to it, it was just nice. It felt like I'd found some kindred spirits.

One thing that bugged me a bit was how Lyla and Tripp thought of their parents. Tripp refers to his mom as "The Termite" and does things behind her back that are admittedly funny but mostly just mean and spiteful. No matter how accurate, I don't appreciate a book that openly encourages back-handed parental disobedience. I get that both Lyla's and Tripp's parents are very strict and don't always do what's best for their kids but there are better ways to deal with that. Lying and secrets and theft and sneaking around are not the ways to deal with these problems.

So after the first half of the book was all cute and sweet I knew there would need to be some kind of major conflict to round out the story. But the way this plot moved and twisted was just... dumb. The climactic conflict felt forced and then the happily-ever-after ending was abrupt. I was pretty annoyed by the ending.

So, overall this was cute. It was a nice, quick, clean read. I won't exactly go out of my way to recommend it to anyone but if you're interested in a clean read about music, this is a decent book to find that.

Sexual Content: None
Language: None
Violence: Mild
Drugs/Alcohol: None