Echo after Echo by Amy Rose Capetta

Candlewick Press, 2017. ISBN 9780763691646
(Age: Young Adult readers) Recommended. I must admit this is not my usual type of book, but a few pages in and I was hooked. I literally felt like I was part of the theatre observing the story so closely that I was an eye witness. I love the fact the novel is set out like a three-act play where the reader is drawn into this compelling story. A dream come true for Zara but with a nightmarish edge that makes the reader feel very deeply. I could vividly picture the shabby theatre in New York where the story is based. Zara gains her dream role as Echo in the Greek tragedy Echo and Ariston at the Aurelia theatre. The eccentric but visionary director Leopold Henneman ensures that Zara commits herself to the play and nothing else.
It is a tale that has something for everyone: love, mystery, a possible curse and murder. If I could have sat just reading this from beginning to end and forgetting everything else, I would have been a very happy reader. The leading ladies Zara and Eli are relatable but what made this pairing very refreshing was they fall in love with each other without the usual cliched struggle for acceptance. I felt a little like Agatha's Christie's Miss Marple trying to solve the murders that are plaguing the theatre, as the story unfolds.
I love the way that Amy Rose Capetta has woven the story, it is like coming to a fork in the road and not knowing where it will take you but having no choice but venture forward.
I found this an utterly delightful book and at last a Young Adult romance with SUBSTANCE. It may be the novel to turn around my opinion of Romance as a genre.
Elaine Grottick