**QWERTY**

Transcend by Christine Fonseca
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

All seventeen-year-old composer Ien Montgomery desires is an escape from his family's rigid expectations for his life; someone to inspire his music. When he meets a beautiful violin-prodigy, Kiera McDougal, his life music takes on new life. With her, he imagines a future outside of his parents’ control. That is, until a horrible accident tears them apart.
Sent to die in a sanatorium, Ien’s obsession for Kiera grows unbearable. Tortured by thoughts he can’t escape and the truth of his monstrous disfigurement, he flees, desperate to exact revenge on the people that ruined his life – his parents. But, vengeance is empty. Betrayed by those closest to him, Ien discovers that the price for his happiness may be his sanity.
Set amidst the landscape of New York's Gilded Age, and inspired by Phantom of the Opera, TRANSCEND exposes the fine line between love and madness.

Easy 5-stars, folks...easy 5-stars. This book is literally a drug.

For start, I read Dies Irae and Lacrimosa, two of Christine's other works and did like them. But I felt that sometimes the narration was too grandiose. But that kind of narration on Transcend...

...fits perfectly. Probably because I'd say that this is more of a historical fiction than a young adult.

Okay, come on...I always love retellings. I always love psychotic serial killers who don't know they're insane dynamic, flawed main characters. So when I first heard that Transcend is inspired by Gerald Butler

err...I mean, Phantom of The Opera, I was psyched! And the cover is the best one among Christine's books so far, but I just wish it had better title font :(

Things I like;

1. Every chapter starts with an except from a famous book or poem. I find this very effective in setting the tone of that particular chapter.

2. Plotwise..it..err...takes you round and round in the circle. The keyword here is 'delusions'. So, don't expect a fast-paced or bone-chilling thiller! :) But I really like it, plotwise! I like being in Ien's head! :D

3. It's rare for me to like and enjoy a story that doesn't have many dialogues but Transcend did it for me.

4. Ien.

Wow! The character building is remarkable. The depth of his emotions is portrayed in such a way that I think only a psychologist could! Haha. Other characters are very secondary and I think it's a wise decision because Ien needs that focus, that attention, otherwise, I don't think I could be as attached to him as I am right now.

5. My favourite quotes? Lemme see, it's from..uh...page 1 to page 451. That's all.

6. The ending. ***Spoiler alert***I never thought it's remotely possible to write a happy ending for Ien's story but Christine did that! ***Spoiler finished***[I never thought it's remotely possible to write a happy ending for Ien's story but Christine did that!

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Things I didn't like

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Hmph, I give up. I couldn't find any.

Wait! Probably only one. I'm still confused with the switch from first person narration to the third person narration, I think I need to re-read this in order to undertand the significance.

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