Jeremy King could ruin Carmen’s life. Not because he’s good-looking or arrogant, but because Jeremy’s also a violin virtuoso and her main rival of the prestigious Guarneri competition. Never mind the prize money, or the chance to win the four-year loan of the Guarneri violin – it’s the international performance opportunities that Carmen needs to get over the child prodigy hump. You would think being caught spying on the competition would turn Jeremy off to Carmen but it has the opposite effect. Cocky Jeremy is interested in Carmen and not just to size her up, and after several untried years of violin being her life, Carmen has another choice, something else worth living for. That may not be what her stage mother and manager, a former Metropolitan opera singer herself, has in mind, and when Carmen stops taking her anti-anxiety medication without warning it’s the last straw. But Carmen is fed up with always doing what’s expected, and this time she has her own plans in mind, whether it means winning the Guarneri or not.

I never planned on reading Virtuosity; in fact I’d written it off in May after seeing the cover everywhere in BEA posts. With the title and beautiful girl flicking her hair back, it looked like just another YA paranormal or dystopian romance so I didn’t even bother reading the publisher summary. So much for judging a book by it’s cover. It wasn’t until I read this review that I found out it was contemporary, and a novel with musicians at that. Having studied piano all my life and at times very seriously (and taking similar performance anxiety medication) I knew I had to read it. After one day and nearly one sitting I’m so glad that I did. That I rarely read a book straight through says something about the pace, which is fast and in my mind, flawless. The reader is dropped into the thick of the competition and Carmen’s high-pressure life and the intensity doesn’t let up from there. The stakes are high, and not just in the obvious way of the Guarneri and a relationship with the competition. You know early on that Carmen, whose stringent practicing and performing schedule has left her no room for a social life, is hinging her life upon any connection to Jeremy and each small decision made defying her mother, which only just begins with her quitting the performance anxiety drugs. Carmen can’t imagine her life without the violin but it may come down to that. It also doesn’t hurt that I liked Jeremy right away, his brazen confidence on and off stage the complete opposite of Carmen. He is both irritating and endearing in his sense of humor and his behavior towards Carmen, which made me smile and sigh in turn. Though one of his most desperate actions seemed out of character and left me scratching my head, their relationship was sweet and happily the resolution of the various plot lines could have gone either or any way, so truly unexpected and real the ending was. I loved the experience of reading Virtuosity and I’m definitely there for whatever Jessica Martinez writes next.

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