Title: Masquerade
Author: Joel Abernathy
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 202 Pages
Category: Gothic Horror, Historical Romance
At a Glance: In this semi-faithful homage to The Phantom of the Opera, Joel Abernathy offers up some truly beautiful prose, inspiring the appropriate emotional tone and often tugging at the heartstrings.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: We all wear masks.
He came to me like a ghost singing songs of the past…
An angel, promising redemption.
Now I know the truth of the man behind the mask, and Erik’s soul is more broken and twisted than I ever imagined.
Even an angel’s wings can be broken.
The moment I heard his voice, I knew he was mine.
Mine to teach.
Mine to mold.
Mine to possess.
The music of our souls entwined is sweeter than any I’ve ever written, but the words to this song tell a story as dark as it is forbidden.
Is it love, or is it obsession?
I’ve lost track, and now I have to choose.
Release my angel and lose him forever, or hold on until his wings turn as black and shattered as my soul.
Review: Joel Abernathy isn’t the first author to give an LGBTQ twist to a classic. It’s been done with everything from The Wizard of Oz to Peter Pan to The Picture of Dorian Grey to Beauty and the Beast to The Little Mermaid—and those are just the ones I’ve read. Being a huge fan of his Flesh and Bone series, my curiosity was piqued with no small amount of intensity when I saw he’d written a retelling of The Phantom of the Opera. The result is a semi-faithful homage to the original, with a gender-bending lead and a lovely romantic twist that offers the Phantom the happily-ever-after he earned and deserved.
Christine Daaé is the heroin of Leroux’s original tale, and that is also the case here but with a twist. Christine is the alter-ego of Christian Daaé, the beautiful and undeniably talented young ingénue Christian becomes on the Paris stage, who has attracted the attention of the infamous ‘opera ghost’ who haunts the theater. As every good story needs a theme, Abernathy fittingly weaves the deceptiveness of appearances and the masks we wear, including the emotional ones behind which we hide our truest and deepest feelings as a means of self-preservation, into his story.
Erik, the recluse who is revealed as both Christian’s Angel of Music and the Phantom, draws readers into his fold with a poignant backstory that points to the unjustness of a world which judges appearance and mistreats those they’ve labeled ‘monster’. Erik is not immediately identifiable as the hero of the story. In fact, Abernathy paints Erik as a would-be villain, a title that isn’t altogether unearned as he’s not above carrying out a variety of misdeeds to bend people to his will. But it’s not long before readers discover that this is, perhaps, Erik’s greatest performance. Erik is less lawless miscreant than he is the product of his past.
The love triangle aspect of the tale is completed with the return of Christian’s childhood friend and longtime love, Raoul d’Chagny. As Raoul and Christian begin to rekindle their friendship and their feelings reveal something more, something deeper, it becomes clear that Raoul—for the sake of propriety and, of course, his social standing as the Vicomte d’Chagny—will only accept Christian as Christine, which causes Christian no small amount of conflict. Christian wants, needs, and deserves someone who accepts every facet of who he is, whether he is presenting as Christian or Christine, and while their initial meeting isn’t one of an immediate connection and kinship, Erik becomes the one to inspire Christian to shine. For that, Raoul is determined to make Erik pay, which sets up the final conflict of the novel.
Abernathy grows the relationship between Christian and Erik in fertile ground. Erik’s compositions and Christian as both Erik’s muse and star of his operas gives them a bond that goes deeper than mere attraction. The concept of attraction also inspires their greatest discord—how could Erik allow himself to dream that someone as beautiful as Christian might ever find happiness with someone as monstrous as he? Raoul’s final blow reveals who the true monster of the story is, however, and it all culminates in a dramatic and fitting finale.
There are some truly beautiful passages in Masquerade, highlighting the author’s talent for turning a phrase, inspiring the appropriate emotional tone, and often tugging at the heartstrings. There were a few times I felt the language choices were too modern for the late 19th century setting, but that’s more my tendency to demand a lot from my historical romance than it is a criticism of the author’s writing. Joel Abernathy has taken a beloved story and made it something of his own, and I enjoyed it wholeheartedly.
You can buy Masquerade here:
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