Perfect Harmony is not only a very fitting title for the story, it's also a very accurate phrase to describe my experience reading this book.

The reading experience as just so perfectly harmonizing, because it's so comfortable. It was cute, enjoyable, and a very fun read when you're just...looking for a fun read. It's nice, welcoming, calm, and doesn't give you too much emotional stress. Declan and Pip are adorable, the story-line makes me want to go practice my piano and violin, and the kiss scenes were definitely not disappointing (thank god). Everything about this book is just ADORABLE (awwww).

It followed the pretty standard YA contemporary hate-love formula, which is something I'm not complaining about because this made the story really safe for my already-too-fragile heart. It was heartwarming, soft, entertaining, swoon-worthy, what more can I ask for?

The synopsis of Perfect Harmony stuck out to me from other books because I am a cellist myself. This novel is fun, romantic, and yes-- the dedication that the main character feels towards her cello-playing is completely accurate. To orchestra kids, their instrument is everything, and I loved the fact that Pippa would do anything for her goal of getting into the most prestigious arts school in the country.

On the other hand, Perfect Harmony struggles in its rising action. The beginning of the book left me underwhelmed and even annoyed at times. The reason for this is the love triangle; when done well, a love triangle can be interesting, but I felt that the fact that both Noah and Declan having feelings towards Pippa was only to stir up unnecessary drama that could have been easily solved. Of course, the book wouldn't be the same without these struggles, so you'll have to either love it or leave it at this point.

But it gets better. The second half of the book was exciting and I enjoyed every second of it. Problems get resolved, goals are fulfilled, and most importantly, the love triangle gets dissolved as Pippa finally chooses who she wants to be with. I found that after the relationship drama was over, Perfect Harmony did a 180 flip and became the cute read it was supposed to be at the very beginning. It was worthwhile to read the entire book, simply because the writing style and plot improved greatly.

Overall, Perfect Harmony was what I expected out of it: a sweet contemporary with friendship, romance, and music appreciation. The book had a shaky start, but the rest made it worth reading. Perfect Harmony isn't anything super special, but it's worth picking up if you enjoy contemporaries, romance, or even if you're just a music lover in general.

Perfect Harmony is fine.

This is a light and easy read, with few surprises and an overwhelming amount of teenage angst.

The story revolves around Pippa, an accomplished cellist with big dreams for her future musical career that suddenly becomes threatened by the new kid in town, Declan. Naturally, the rivalry between the two evolves into love. There are "stumbling blocks" along the way to their happily ever after, but the obstacles the couple face aren't all that challenging and are blown into bigger things than they truly are because, hey, they are teenagers.

That was the biggest drawback for me, at no point did it ever feel like there was going to be anything other than a neat and tidy ending where everything works out for Pippa. Happy endings are fine, don't get me wrong, but it's hard to be excited about it when it was so plain that she was always going to achieve it.

I felt especially that her relationship with her 'best friend,' Quinn, was obnoxious. I don't know anyone in the real world who would categorize someone like Quinn as their best friend, the girl was pretty awful. Meanwhile, poor old basic, plain, regular friend Jenna was wonderful throughout but always was an afterthought. Again, teenagers.

The love triangle between Pippa and her childhood crush, Noah (her twin brothers BFF, obviously) and Declan was ridiculous. Pippa has spent her whole life in love with Noah who inexplicably suddenly wants to date her and she quickly realizes that she only has feelings for Declan. Instead of just accepting that and telling Noah, she spends 75% of the book agonizing over her choice when it's made pretty clear that she doesn't even like Noah anymore. TEENAGERS.

So again, this book was FINE, but I clearly wasn't the target audience.

I received this ARC as a courtesy from NetGalley & the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I really liked that this story wasn't about the star quarterback for the head cheerleader, but the rivalry felt really inflated and juvenile.

I received an advanced reader copy in exchange for a fair review.

My summary of book: YA, love triangle, cutesy, romance, cringe, cheese, cliche, angst and drama.

This book was not bad, but definitely not what I expected. I'm torn between two and three stars for the rating... I think I'll up it to three because Declan is so sweet! But overall this is maybe closer to two?? I'm not good at making stressful life decisions!!!!!

This is not what I was expecting from this novel.

It's so cheesy and cringe.

I was hoping for a book that was more focussed on music. The title, cover & blurb all made it sound so musical! And whilst they do play music, it was a minor story element I felt.

Also, LOVE TRIANGLE instant turn off. And there were actually like two or three overlapping ones and it was just generally horrible. Now that I've mentioned this love triangle, I'm realising I'm going with two stars.

But aside from the love triangle element, characters were good.

The writing bugged me. Pippa (MC) gets goosebumps every second page. LEGIT!! This is a minor gripe, but when I was reading THIS WAS A MAJOR ISSUE!! It completely disrupted the flow of the writing because it annoyed me so much. Haha, me, a drama queen???? NEVER?!

I mean, I now realise that this was mentioned a little in the blurb, but I was not prepared and I hate love triangles. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I really wanted to love this, but it just wasn't for me.

This is a hard book to give a rating to, because while I loved the majority of this book, I didn't really enjoy it near the end. Unfortunately, the endings to books are a pretty important to me, so that give this rating a hit. I thought the story line to this one was fresh and witty. I liked all the characters, including Pippa, the main character. She was mature, intelligent and talented. She is an average teen, unsure of herself and what she feels at time. Not sure to listen to her heart or brain.

I also really enjoyed Declan's character. He is the kind of guy you want to meet during high school. The two of them have an obvious connection, and I adored the easy chemistry between the two of them.

There is some over the top characters and moments, but that is to be expected in some young adult, and was nothing that seriously hurt the way I thought of the book.

Like I said, a few things happened at the end that I felt was unneeded. It kind of interrupted the flow of the book, and changed how I felt about some characters and relationships. It made me care a little less about what happens to them.

Otherwise, this was a fast, fun read.

Perfect Harmony by Emily Albright sounded great, in theory. It had a lot of potential, a story line that was immediately interesting which I found myself eager to delve into. I’ve always been a fan of the enemies to lovers trope, despite how cliche it has become, and so naturally this was a book I was looking forward to reading. And for the most part, Perfect Harmony started out okay. But very quickly everything good about the book went downhill.

I’m kind of blown away that this book has more good ratings than bad ones. Featuring terrible characters and even worse advice giving with an emphasis on unrealistic butting in, this book just hit all the wrong points. And good lord, the so-lovey it’s disgusting insta-love was the hardest thing in the world to stomach. I think my eyeballs might be permanently rolling now that I’ve finished.

Perfect Harmony begins with a new kid in school, a boy who, in a horrifying twist of fate, plays the same instrument as the main character and immediately makes it clear that he plans to take first chair from her. It’s a decent enough plot that had me rather excited to read. We all know how the book will end, it’s massively predictable in a great number of ways, but the build up is what we come to these stories for. Well, the build up in this one was so minimal and pedestrian that it made the entire novel not even worth reading.

And this was greatly disappointing because the book truly had such great potential.

But instead of actually showing readers how these two characters pushed past their differences and the competition that they are both clearly pressured by in order to really respect and care for each other, it jumps over all the important parts. There’s no slow burn. We don’t see the characters grow with each other. We never see how they learn to like one another, much less how they eventually fall in love. It’s all passed over for the most immature of personal questioning from the main character where her inner thoughts regularly interject with phrases from, “Why did my stomach just flip?” to “Did I just check out his tush?”

Speaking of tush, the constant references to the characters “checking out” each other’s “backsides” was nauseating. I could understand once or twice, but the level that this book referenced butts was so annoying. Not to mention that Declan’s immediate nickname for Pippa is Princess and he literally never shuts up about it. By the fifth Princess at the beginning of the novel, I was already sick of it. And this kept up throughout the whole novel.

And then there are the supporting characters, every single one having next to no personality whatsoever—a characteristic almost portrayed in the main characters as well, but just barely misses the mark—from best friend Quinn who literally exists to create a plot point of unnecessary drama that I found crazy ironic considering the fact that she was initially placed in as a conversation booster to push Pippa toward liking Declan, or at least recognizing that he likes her. This role, for some godawful reason, was pushed onto Pippa’s mother shortly after it becomes unrealistic for Quinn to continue.

Pippa’s brother Phillip, while cool and interesting, plays almost no role in the story other than to give another character someone to like and adds to the giant love mess. This was frustrating on a number of levels, largely because he was Pippa’s twin and it felt like she barely knew him at all but also because he was a genuinely interesting character we barely got to see. Then comes Noah, the only character I actually liked, a long time friend of Phillip’s who Pippa has been crushing on forever. He’s the only character who ever actually felt real enough to appreciate and even he was ruined by some ridiculous love pentagon that resulted in the most disastrous and disturbing one liner I’ve ever heard, regarding the determination to continue fighting for someone who clearly doesn’t seem to be reciprocating the feelings.

Why is there a theme in this story with nearly everyone—barring Pippa’s mother and brother, I guess??—starting out okay and then becoming a massive brat?

Perfect Harmony is a hot mess and it’s disappointing because I had been genuinely quite excited to read it. There was so much potential here, but somewhere in the 25% mark, everything fell apart. I knew going in how the story would end, just as all other stories like this end, but I was okay with it at first because I was hoping for the slow burn fun of watching people hate each other and then fall in love—something beautifully executed by that new Netflix movie, Candy Jar—but instead I got a lot of time jumps, characters that mainly existed for plot purposes, and the most annoying main characters I’ve read in a while.

I guess this one just wasn’t for me. The idea was great. The execution, not so much.

2.5 stars

It's not that bad (2 stars is "it was ok" so 2.5 stars is it was ok and I kinda liked it), but I also found it to be lacking in certain areas: a (more eventful) plot, actual pressing problems, secondary characters that made sense, and seamless transitions in the writing.

Writing could use more polishing—it had the propensity to tell rather than show, making it difficult to visualize what was happening; it's important to note, though, that there are precious moments written beautifully by showing rather than telling, which solidifies my belief that the author is capable of it but that the writing needed more polishing to reach its full potential.

The transitions are not as seamless as could be—there were a lot of times where I was confused because the scenes seemed to jump instead of transition to the next.

Contrary to the enemies-to-lovers vibe the blurb exuded, the actual story was different—Declan basically crushed on her from the very beginning, and Pippa didn't take long before she reciprocated the crush. The progression of their relationship wasn't that organic, either; they went from being disdainful towards each other to them suddenly . . . having romantic feelings for each other. We don't know how that happened; we weren't shown it—instead, we moved from Point A (them mocking each other) to Point B (them having romantic feelings for each other) without much clarity on the how and the why. That's why I found it difficult to believe when Pippa suddenly had all these butterflies and moments of jealousy when we barely saw her getting to know Declan on that level.

And the plot . . . well, to be perfectly frank, I struggled to finish this. There were times when I wondered if I was too old for this kind of story, but I quickly disputed that when I looked at the stories I've read and saw that there were many books in the same category that I truly loved and were such a delight to read. That left me with this: there really wasn't anything going on in this story. Or, if it was, it wasn't executed in a way that reads like a cohesive narrative. There were no real stakes in the story, and the decisions of some of the characters, especially this one particular side character, require a serious suspension of disbelief. There are, however, moments that were real and relatable and made you nod in assent, but these moments were few and far in between.

I need stakes in a story, and they don't have to be between life and death—I'd argue that some contemporaries pose even higher stakes than fantasies and dystopias—but these stakes have to be real and bring about actual conflict, not 'stakes' that you have to force yourself to believe in. I need a good and credible progression of relationships, not one that feels abrupt or confusing (of the how-did-this-happen kind). Sadly, I did not find those here. There are silver linings, real moments administered by decent writing; I'm just not sure if they're enough to make it a worthwhile read . . . when you've got other stories that accomplish the same things (and more) with better execution.

All in all: Perfect Harmony is an okay story, but I feel that "okay" is the best it could be.

This book was everything I needed! This is a sweet, romantic YA contemporary that has a great hate to love type relationship. Both characters were well developed for me, great pacing and such great messages about love, finding out who you are, accepting love and chasing your dreams. Libraries need to purchase this great contemporary for their collection due to its great messages, genuine teen POV in the writing style and memorable characters. This book kinda reminded me of Sarah Dessen's books with how genuine it is, great family dynamics and female character. Highly recommended :)

Fans of Rainbow Rowell will love this book which is a perfect blend of music, friendships, and love.

Pippa Wyndham is a top cellist, first chair at her school. She has her life planned out – get into Goddards – the top music school in the country, graduate and find her way to the New York Philharmonic. She has had a crush on Noah, her twin brother’s best friend, since forever. When he starts noticing her, she thinks her life is perfect.
Declan is a cellist, just like Pippa. He moved from New York in his final year and has got on Pippa’s nerves ever since she found out he might be her competition. When their music teacher pairs them together to practice for a duet, falling for Declan is the last thing on her mind. But soon, she is unable to deny her growing feelings towards Declan, her sworn enemy. And there’s a possibility that Declan likes her back.. But she can’t fall for him or her dreams would all come crashing down.

Each chapter begins with a quote on music which was absolutely amazing and I loved such warm-up reminders of how awesome music is.

Albright’s writing is amazing. I don’t know what I expected, but this was perfect. Her tone is smooth and straight forward and touching at the right places. And frankly, even if the plot felt dragged out a bit at places, it was what kept me reading. I’d certainly check out more of her books.

The focus on music was an enchanting experience. But I wish it focused more on describing the feel of the music rather than just about how Pippa felt. I know it wasn’t songs and there weren’t lyrics, but I wanted more.
I love Pippa and Declan, though not necessarily together. Pippa’s voice was immature at times, but her character growth is undeniable. It had a certain nostalgic feeling in it, which made me reminisce my school days. Few high school books have achieved that level of impact, and this one is certainly one among them. And the way this book tackled the stereotypes of girls always vying for attention from boys is worth a mention.

The romance was one of the best I’ve encountered in YA, but only in the beginning. It wasn’t insta-love by any means, but rather r the enemies-to-lovers kinda romance. There is a big love pentagon which was actually executed well. The only thing I felt lacking was, the communication between Pippa and Declan. Every single time they are together, they’re either kissing or she’s thinking of kissing him. It didn’t feel right. You can only read so much about fireworks exploding in your stomach each time the love interests look at you.

Overall, this was a great read. If you’re looking for some nostalgic, light read with mild friendship and family dynamics, then this book is for you.

***ARC received in exchange of an honest opinion***

This was a cute read. A bit too YA for me, but cute. I don’t mind stories set in high school, I often enjoy them, but this one was a hard one for me to relate too because it was VERY immature.

The characters were okay, but they were almost too childish. The main characters weren’t that bad, but the secondary ones were almost unbearable.

In the end, Perfect Harmony is a nice read, it just wasn’t the perfect book for me. I liked it, but it didn't impress me.

I received an ARC copy from netgalley for my honest review,  so thank you netgalley and publishers for offering me this book! ♡
The cover is what originally drew me to this book.
This was my first book by this author, It was cute!. If you like morgan matson or kasie west I think you will enjoy this book. It was alltogether an easy read. ♡ I give this book a
4.5 star rating!

I received an Advance Reader Copy from the publisher via NetGalley. This in no way impacted on my view

When I first saw this book on NetGalley, initially it was the synopsis that drew me in, and I hadn't even noticed who the author was, but when I realised this was by Emily Albright, whose debut, The Heir and the Spare, remains one of my favourite books, I knew it was for me. Perfect Harmony follows Pippa, who is preparing for her auditions to get into the top music college in the country, and everything is thrown for a loop when another cellist arrives at her school, and is her competition in anything and everything. Wanting nothing to do with Declan, she finds her music teacher is working against her, and they are having to work together on a duet for their final exam, and for a prestigious competition, that could open more doors for her than she'd ever hoped. However, Declan is cocky, and seems to know just how to push Pippa's buttons, and she finds herself torn between hating him, and falling for him.

I'm going to admit it now, I'm not musical, at all. I mean, when I was in primary school, and we had a 'music week', I was the girl who asked if she could do extra maths or something, rather than play an instrument. That's not to say I don't appreciate how hard musicians work, especially classical musicians, and this book helped me to see just how much work musicians put into being the best, and making themselves proud, if not anyone else. Pippa's life seemed to revolve around her cello, but it was her passion, and it was good to see when she struggled, but also when she simply adored the art and all the hard work paid off.

If you hadn't guessed from the synopsis, this book has the classic 'enemies to lovers' trope, and I adore that trope more than any others, I think. As soon as Pippa and Declan met, you could just see the chemistry and sparks jump off the page, and I was rooting for them from the get go. One problem for them was Pippa's long time crush, and her twin brother's best friend, Noah, who suddenly decided that he'd liked Pippa all along, and wanted to be with her. Yeah, we hate Noah. He'd never seen Pippa as anything other than his friend's sister, and his friend too, until there was some competition there, and he'd known about her crush all along. Whenever Pippa and Noah were together, I just couldn't see anything between them, and wanted nothing more than for him to go away.

That love triangle wasn't the only one, it ended up more like a love square, or even pentagon, at one point, and that's what made me only give the book 4 stars. Pippa's friend Quinn decides she likes Declan, and then Pippa's brother Philip decides he likes Quinn. Honestly, it got a bit too complicated at one point, and if I hadn't been invested in Pippa and Declan's journey, I might've DNFed, but I didn't. That all being said, Pippa and Declan's relationship, once it got past the ups and downs of other prospective beaus, and the drama of being in competition with each other, was really sweet. Declan had a troubled home life, with divorced parents, and an estranged relationship with his father, and we slowly saw him open up to Pippa, and open himself up to working with his dad on rebuilding their relationship after a trip to New York.

All in all, Perfect Harmony was a perfect (pun intended) contemporary book for the summer autumn, especially if you're a fan of the enemy to lovers trope, or even if you aren't. I look forward to more from Emily in the future.

A short and sweet YA romance, we follow Pippa as she navigates getting into college and her love life. It all seems quite manageable, until Declan shows up. This story is quite pure and perfectly safe for your kids to read. However, there is no actual drama and the “problems” that the main character faces are not really that big of a deal. With that said, it should appeal to younger teenagers, although perhaps not those that are the exact age of the characters (17-18 years old). Sometimes, you just want a happy fluff-fest, where things are idealistic and while somewhat predictable, the story leaves you satisfied and uplifted. If that makes you happy, why not? After all, real life is full of enough misery!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Pippa thought she had her life down: first chair cellist in her school's orchestra that no one could take away from her and crush hard enough on her twin brother's best friend Noah until he finally realizes they are meant to be forever and ever, amen.

But she never saw Declan coming.

And now Noah is suddenly changing his tune.

Challenging not only her first chair, Declan counters everything she thought she wanted in Noah and Pippa soon realizes that her life plan isn't as solid as she once envisioned.

What first starts out as dislike and competitive rivalry with Declan soon turns into affection and understanding. No longer pushing against each other, Pippa and Declan sync up like beautifully harmonized instruments on and off stage, but - of course - not without its complications.

Light and sweet with a dash of angst, Perfect Harmony hits all the right notes!

Thanks to NG for the ARC. This was a super cute summer romance, quick read high school love story set against competitive cell players. Pippa is first chair cello in her HS orchestra and is planning her future and a prestigious music school in NYC. She has been in love with her twin brother's best friend for years. New student Declan, ironically also a cello player and from NYC, shows up and starts wreaking havoc on Pippa's best laid plans. Very predictable plot as soon as Declan is on the the scene for the most part, but well-written and I love the orchestra competitions and the cello playing. Lots of friend drama and teenage angst with a healthy dose of sweetness. Short cute summer read!

Well, this story was definitely cute and fluffy! But I felt like it wasn't that original. Still enjoyable though! Perfect if you're looking for a quick read.

I liked this book. It was sweet and I like that the protagonist wasn't your typical high school girl.