Author: Avylinn
Winter
Links:
Length: 72,000
words
The Violinist
(Now called Volatile), won a Watty award in 2015 in the LGBT+ category.
The Wattys is the world’s largest online writing contest hosted once a
year by Wattpad.
Blurb
Like a depressed
moth drawn to a wild flame, Chris hoped that flame would brighten his life,
not burn him alive.
Chris Sinclair
fades into a grey world after losing his mother to cancer. When forced
to attend a concert as a last attempt to coax him out of his shell, he
discovers that life might not be as bleak as he first thought.
Dante Heron
holds the audience between the tips of his fingers and the delicate
bow, playing the violin as if every heart is his to command. However,
something darker brews behind the façade, and Chris is determined to solve
the enigma.
When Chris is
offered the job of traveling around Europe with the famous violinist,
he surprises himself by accepting. With no idea what awaits him, he's
thrown into a world where emotions rule and rules are bent.
They're a
perfectly dysfunctional match, but then there's always calm at the heart of
the storm.
My thoughts
This
is going to be a hard review for me to write. Volatile is a wonderful
book and flawlessly written, it just wasn’t a book for me. But, I have
absolutely no doubt that my reasons for finding this a harder story to read
will be the main reasons others are going to adore it.
But,
let me start with everything that was wonderful about this book before I get to
my very personal reasons for having a hard time with it. This is a very well
written story. The words and descriptions hooked me from the moment I started
reading. I really felt as if I was in Chris’s head, I could feel his gloom, I
shared his fears and excitement, and his pain tore through me.
Because
we experience everything that happens through Chris’s eyes and thoughts, and
Chris is ‘only’ twenty years old and therefore not yet very world wise, Dante
remained almost as much of an enigma to me as he was for Chris. But, and this
was done very well, I did have a better understanding of what might be going on
with the talented violinist than Chris had. But, to be fair, Chris was still
fighting a few demons of his own, which made it harder for him to recognise
Dante’s.
That’s
what this story is about; two troubled and fragile young men trying to find and
keep their footing in a world that appears to expect them to live, act, and
perform in a manner well beyond their age. I think my heart started breaking
about two paragraphs into the story, and it didn’t stop until I had almost
finished the book.
And
that, in a nutshell, is my personal issue with this book. I don’t do angst. I
don’t deal with it very well and avoid it in my reading when I can. And there’s
angst a plenty in Volatile and it is very well done. While a lot of the angst is
the result of Chris and Dante just not communicating with each other—one of my
pet peeves— it made perfect sense in this story. In fact, if they had talked
about all their issues with each other, it would have been completely out of
character. Given who they are, their ages, and individual histories, their
relationship couldn’t have developed in any other way. But, knowing all of
that, did not make it easier for me to read.
Long story short; if you enjoy very well written stories,
featuring two fascinating young men building a troubled relationship, and a
liberal dose of angst, this is THE book for you. Go read it and enjoy while I
try to figure out whether or not I want to read the next book when it comes
out. Because on the one hand, Avylinn Winter is a wonderful writer and
storyteller, but on the other hand, my heart can only take so much angst.
Author Bio
Raised in one
of the cold corners of the world, Avylinn spends her days either wrapped up in
a blanket or basking in the precious sunlight. When she can’t choose
herself, she’s holed up in an office working with climate research that
has little to do with the worlds and characters she creates in her vivid dreams.
Always the
emotional one, she has found her outlet in writing, voicing thoughts, emotions
and fears through her characters that feel very much alive to her. And,
what began as a hobby soon took more and more time in her life until she
realized that she had left her old life behind and entered a new one where her
emotions turned into a super power—ready to launch at her poor readers.
She recharges
with the help of coffee, cinnamon buns, popcorn and occasionally a healthier
alternative.
Social media links
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