Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC.

I'm not going to lie - I wasn't very impressed by this book. From the blurb, I felt like it was going to really hone in on the #MeToo movement but it almost feels a bit swept aside in this story.

I also didn't empathize with the main character. It was difficult to get a grasp of her true feelings and motivations. The voice is quite muted and that's okay but because of that it's difficult to get a sense of who she is and why she is so determined to play the piano. Wanting to go to a good college, yes, very relatable but even so it doesn't feel like a strong enough motivation.

There was also the potential to showcase more of the relationship between the mother and the daughter which ultimately fell short.

It was interesting though to see how immersive books about music can be. Even though we can't hear the music, there are at times, you can feel it through the words.

Shy, lonely Claire, 17, lives in Fremont, CA, with her widowed Filipino mother. To enhance her college applications she decides to take her piano playing to the next level. She convinces a renowned but tough teacher to take her on as a student. Leaving her quiet life to study in San Francisco every week introduces her to new friends and experiences, some of them devastating. Claire puts it all into her music. She grows and matures as she comes to terms with her own misperceptions and the transgressions of others. Throughout, beautiful music emanates from the text.

4.5 out of 5 stars!

I would not recommend this book to young teens-- I think a decent age approximation should be fifteen and up? While the book and characters make it clear that something that happened isn't good, younger readers might misinterpret it.
Claire is a seventeen year old girl who plays piano. She starts out a little NLOG with her friends, though she's already been established well enough that it feels like an added bit of fluff, rather than her whole agenda. While I don't know much about piano myself, Ms. Salaysay doesn't make lack-of-piano knowledge a stumbling block, luckily!
As I was reading this, I was getting vibes off certain characters, and I was very pleased to find out that the vibes were purposefully put into place there. Several characters call things out that Claire cannot let herself see-- an important look at a support system that teens should be aware of. Claire makes mistakes-- she's a teenager, after all, and the book walks us through some of the ways she is impacted by them.

Claire's relationship with her mother swings up and down, like all teenage relationships, deepened by the loss of her father. Realistic and deep, it's one of the highlights of the book.

I think this will find readers in my high school library; the character development is solid and the pacing is good.

DNF. While I liked the writing style and classical music references, I was not expecting this book to be nearly as sexually explicit as it was. Not my thing at all.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of PRIVATE LESSONS by Cynthia Salaysay in exchange for my honest review.***

2.5 STARS

I loved the premise for PRIVATE LESSONS. The scenario of teacher grooming student happens too often. Paul’s methods of withholding praise was a particularly unkind manner of grooming Claire, so eager for his approval. Although I never took music lessons, I knew a piano teacher very much like Paul with his coldness and sexual inappropriateness.

PRIVATE LESSONS is a better book than my enjoyment of it. Reading Cynthia Salaysay’s debut felt like a chore rather than a pleasure. I had difficulty connecting to Claire’s narration and her character and didn’t feel her supposed passion for piano. Did nobody tell her how to interview? Her blasé attitude and lackluster audition with Paul didn’t convince me she cared about piano. Claire acted like her mom could simply print money with her sense of entitlement. Claire wanting to please and feeling inadequate felt authentic, especially with her mom’s Filipino roots.

Salaysay’s writing, while adequate, had more telling than showing often feeling like words on a page without much excitement. Still, in the #MeToo era of confronting abusers like Paul, private lessons is an important and timely story.

Since Private Lessons will be expected to publish on May 12th, 2020, I will do my best not to spoil anything.

In a brief, Private Lessons is about a seventeen-year-old girl named Claire Alalay who lost his father at a young age. The way she copes herself after she lost her father is only through music especially when she plays the piano. So, she decided to take private piano lessons with Paul Avon, the best piano teacher. For that, she needs to go through Paul's audition and get a place for it becomes one of Paul's students. In her journey through her piano lessons and her life in general, there's a lot of things she has to go through. The need to practice hard day by day to get Paul's approval, grief over her father's death, and people taking advantage of her.

I..have a mixed feeling over the story, honestly. I couldn't get through the story. It seems really hard to connect with the whole story. One part, I do understand and another part, I felt nothing. There are parts that I feel uncomfortable. I know for the fact that this happened around us, so the character is really understandable with the whole situation she has to face it. It wasn't easy for her too. Claire is naive somehow at the same time, she was really irritating to me. I don't hate her, it just annoyed me with her attitude.

The story has been crafted well. The way the author portrays the real deal on how cunning people around Claire. It may not easy to read for me but I manage to finish the book so that I can be sure Claire is okay. It may not be my cup of tea but it is what it is. Don't get affected by my review, this is what I felt and it might be different for you.