Savannah Marshall is a gifted flutist and daughter of musical royalty when she enrols in the elite New England Conservatory of Music. Brilliant, eclectic and passionate, she lives music, but struggles with her plans for the future.
Gregory Fitzgerald is one of the most renowned cellists of his generation. A member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and professor at the Conservatory, he is laser focused on his career to the exclusion of friends, family and especially romance.
When Gregory and Savannah’s paths cross in the classroom, it threatens to challenge more than their wildly differing beliefs on music. Friendships, ethics, and careers are put on the line as Gregory and Savannah play a symphony of passion and heartbreak.
In the final movement, Gregory and Savannah are handed their greatest challenge, as the loss of absolutely everything they’ve held as truths hangs in the balance.
Nocturne was a beautifully written, very ‘real’ forbidden love story. These authors have true talent!
The story spans almost a decade and is told in a few parts. It begins with Savannah auditioning for the Conservatory fresh from high school in front of a panel of teachers headed by Gregory, the youngest cellist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It then skips forward three years to her second last year where, for the first time, she is in one of Gregory’s classes. And finally, the last part of the story is told five years after that and then again, another two years after as well.
Savannah and Gregory were polar opposites in so many ways. While they both shared a deeply passionate love for music, Savannah was very much of a free spirit and always looking to bend the rules and discover new forms of music, while Gregory’s world was defined solely by strict adherence to rigid discipline and the proper rules. She was a natural rule breaker and he lived by them and yet somehow, they were undeniably drawn to each other from the moment they met.
Their connection through the music was so… intense. It was palatable. Everyone around them could feel it too. These weren’t the kind of feelings that just couldn’t be hidden, especially when they played together…
“I caught my breath because it was as if she was speaking to me in a private language only we knew. The room had narrowed, only the two of us, and the music between us.”
“Music is communication. It’s emotion. It’s passion and love and hate and expression.”
While this is in part a student/teacher romance, there is absolutely nothing uncomfortable about it at all. At the start of their relations, she was already in her early twenties and for the most part, he was not her instructor at the same time so really there was nothing that ever put me on edge.
The story was a very slow burn, building in quiet intensity. And the writing was just absolutely beautiful! Truly exquisite. The smooth flow of the story and vivid descriptions made it a joy to read.
I believe it takes great skill as an author to describe music in such a way as to make the readers genuinely feel it even though they can’t hear it and this book managed to do that do vividly. Every detail was projected onto me in a way that fully immersed me in their world. However, as a person who is not very involved in the classical music world, there were times when I found the descriptions to be a little too ‘much’ and some of the dialogue and mannerisms were a little too formal for me to fully be immersed in it. I have no doubt that it was an accurate reflection of their world, but on a personal level, I couldn’t fully relate to it and as such, I sometimes felt a little like I was on the outside looking in rather than living it. But this was not a fault of the story or the writing in any way, it was just personal.
As a reader, I was deeply frustrated by Gregory and his “broody, insufferable uptight exterior.” He just was not the kind of man that I am personally attracted to. He was too rigid and too obsessively devoted to his music. While I personally never fell for him over the course of the book, because of the skill of the writing, I still felt Savannah’s feelings for him and felt much more connected to her. She was strong willed and confident and everything about her spun his world right around. He just had so much personal growth to go through and every time he put something else in his life before her, I was simultaneously angry and heartbroken.
“I am in love with you, but there’s nothing I can do about it, and I’m sorry for that.”
I was so mad at him. I wanted him to fight for her. To go after her. To fix things. To choose her. I knew he loved her, but he didn’t love her enough. Not until the very end.
I felt like the traditional ‘romantic roles’ were reversed in this book because truly Savannah knew all along what she wanted from their relationship. She was the one who went for it, fought for it and never let go. I admired her for it and yet my heart still broke for her. In a way though, Gregory’s journey of discovering his priorities was a large part of the book. And most often, life doesn’t teach us lesson in easy ways. Mistakes were made. Years were lost. But sometimes that’s life. In many ways, this was a very ‘real’ love story. Maybe a little ‘too’ real at times?
I liked the story but I wasn’t as completely taken over by it as I might have wished. At the same time though, whenever Savannah and Gregory were together, I got swept back into their connection and my heart wanted them to make it through.
This is a standalone with a HEA.
4 stars
