Book Review: The Musician's Daughter

TITLE: The Musician's Daughter
AUTHOR: Susanne Dunlap
PUBLISHED: 2009
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: Historical fiction, mystery
PREMISE: When Theresa's father is murdered and his violen stolen she goes on a quest to discover why. Her journey takes her from her comfortable life near the palace to gypsy camps and learns things about her father she didn't even know.
MY REVIEW: Don't you hate when summarys of books make it sound way more interesting than the book itself actually is? I do. I'm also afraid that's kind of what happened with Musician's Daughter.
It's not that it's a utterly horrible book. There are good things in it. It's a great peek into a time and place that we don't hear much about so that part was interesting. It was also well written (to a point) and there were things in it that were thought provoking. However, it was slightly...boring.
The story drags a lot in the beginning and then halfway through you pretty much have already guessed who the culprit is. As for that so called epic romance thing that was promised in the book summary? Didn't happen. At all. They didn't even kiss! Really, why promise that the book is going to have this big epic true love when you're not going to have a romance in it to begin with? Normally I'm not one to get bent out of shape when there isn't romance (I know books can be good without it) but considering the summary promised me this great romance I felt slightly...cheated. I hate books that promise exciting big things but fail to deliver on what they promise.
But I'm trying to keep in mind that perhaps the author didn't write the summary because other then these annoying things the book was rather decent. Not overly fantastic but not a complete waste of time either. Just somewhere in between those.
WHO SHOULD READ: musical history fans I guess...
MY RATING: Three out of Five violens

FOR THE FOLLOWING CHALLENGES:
12 by 12 in August
One Hundred Plus Books
YA Challenge
Support Your Local Library