Author(s): Karen Comer

Young Adult

This song has a grace note, a tiny note that's there for embellishment but can easily be ignored, not played. Tonight, I add it in - just because. We can all do with an extra note of grace.

Grace Dalfinch is a talented violinist who longs to play contemporary music in bars, but her mum forbids her. James Crux is an aspiring street artist who promised his dad he wouldn't paint in public until he's finished school.

When Crux witnesses Grace's impromptu performance on a deserted tram, he's inspired to paint her and her violin; when Grace stumbles across her portrait in a Melbourne alley by an anonymous street artist, she sets out to find its creator.

Grace Notes is a debut YA verse novel, set in one of the most locked-down cities in the world - Melbourne, 2020.

For fans of Cath Crowley and Pip Harry.

MATILDA BOOKSHOP REVIEW

Grace and Crux. These two singular young people provide the alternating voices of this spectacular verse novel. Grace is an aspiring contemporary violinist who sees the world through music. Crux is a street artist who sees the world through colour, all of Melbourne his canvas. Both of them live a little inside their head, a little on the fringes of the people around them, but their oddities are so complementary that they understand each other completely .

Poetry is the perfect medium to express the heightened, emotional place these two teenagers find themselves in, trying to find out how they fit in the world as it changes rapidly around them. Emilie