Bridget and Will are married but live like platonic best friends and classical musical partners who enjoy modest success. Bridget is in for a challenging summer when her boyfriend unexpectedly dumps her, her adult children come to stay with her, and she tries to throw a wedding party for her father—all while trying to improve her musical career by rebooting a successful trio she and Will began while at Julliard.
A whodunit isn’t just an effective way to engage readers in a mystery, as Amy Poeppel shows in her entirely charming new novel, Musical Chairs. It’s also a great way to open a rom-com ... Poeppel brings love and humor to her characters’ relationships, as well as betrayal and lies and so many disappointments, professional and personal. And secrets, many of them having been kept for years ... The visuals of Bridget’s house and Edward’s castle are vividly rendered. If readers find themselves feeling the heat and humidity of a sweltering East Coast July, this is no accident. The list of characters is long and defies full summary ... The mysteries unfold over the course of the novel and at a pace that works for all the plot revelations. Poeppel is equally adept at posing and paying off these 'will its' as she is at sustaining the whodunit throughout her delightful novel.
... this charming story begins like a lovely overture, an introduction that gets you used to the rhythm and feeling of the piece. Slowly you become entranced and rapt in the characters and plot of this beautifully composed novel ... Poeppel does a lovely job narrating the story through the third person points of view of not just Bridget and Will, but also their children and many other fascinating characters ... a lovely look into the world of classical music. There is romance, intrigue, secrets that need to be aired, and an ending that isn’t a surprise at all, but rather is a lovely finale to a beautifully played concert.
Reading Amy Poeppel’s Musical Chairs is as fun as watching a Marx Brothers comedy, especially that scene in A Night at the Opera when everyone is squashed into the stateroom ... Poeppel’s people are a mess, but her writing is crisp and breezy. Where does everyone end up when the music stops? Read and find out.
