THE LOVE VARIATIONS

Student pianists battle their attraction while competing for a grand prize.

Marigold Gensler really dislikes Jamie Larson. An emergency related to her mother’s worsening multiple sclerosis made her ghost him on a date their first year at a prestigious New York music school, and they’ve been on the outs ever since. Coming from a small Midwestern town, Jamie has a chip on his shoulder and thinks well-connected East Coast elites like Goldie have unfair advantages. Add to that his professional jealousy of her technically inferior but emotively superior talent, and it’s meant three years of sniping. Now they’re weeks away from an important competition in Stockholm, Jamie is struggling with his younger brother’s death by suicide following homophobic bullying, and Goldie has received an MS diagnosis herself. When Goldie’s father invites Jamie to spend the holiday break at their apartment so he won’t be alone in the dorms, the two rivals come clean about their frustrations with each other. Once the dust settles, they make peace, start practicing together for the competition, and soon slide into a romance. With the book written in dual first-person point-of-view sections and alternating timelines, past and present events are initially a bit hard to distinguish. There are moments that sparkle, such as a sidewalk kiss, but the pacing is bogged down by multiple passages of Goldie and Jamie practicing or listening to music (with one exception where they detour into a duet of a sexier kind). The competition that’s been built up as a real crisis for their relationship becomes almost a nonissue, making their earlier animosity feel like a tempest in a teacup. The reality of Goldie’s worsening condition is acknowledged without really addressing how it will affect their relationship going forward, while Jamie suddenly changes his mind about his aspirations, creating a rushed conclusion.

A romance with high stakes that are defused unconvincingly.