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    Color Song
    Color Song
    Color Song
    Audiobook8 hours

    Color Song

    Written by Victoria Strauss

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    By the author of the acclaimed Passion Blue, a Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of 2012 and “a rare, rewarding, sumptuous exploration of artistic passion,” comes a fascinating companion novel.

    Artistically brilliant, Giulia is blessed—or cursed—with a spirit’s gift: she can hear the mysterious singing of the colors as she creates them in the convent workshop of Maestra Humilità. It’s here that Giulia, forced into the convent against her will, has found unexpected happiness and rekindled her passion to become a painter—an impossible dream for any woman in fifteenth-century Italy.

    But when a dying Humilità bequeaths Giulia her most prized possession—the secret formula for the luminously beautiful paint called Passion blue—Giulia realizes she’s in danger from those who have long coveted the famous color. Faced with the prospect of a life in the convent barred from painting as punishment for keeping Humilità’s secret, Giulia is struck by a desperate idea: What if she disguises herself as a boy? Could she make her way to Venice and find work as an artist’s apprentice?

    Along with the truth of who she is, Giulia carries more dangerous secrets: the exquisite voices of her paint colors and the formula for Humilità’s Passion blue. And Venice, she discovers, with its gilded palazzos and masked balls, has secrets of its own. Trapped in her false identity in this dream-like place where reality and reflection are easily confused, and where art and ambition, love and deception hover like dense fog, can Giulia find her way?

    This stunning, compelling novel explores timeless themes of love and illusion, gender and identity as it asks, What does it mean to risk everything to pursue your passion?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateSep 16, 2014
    ISBN9781491536490
    Color Song
    Author

    Victoria Strauss

    Victoria Strauss is the author of Passion Blue, praised in a starred review as “a rare, rewarding, sumptuous exploration of artistic passion” by Kirkus Reviews and selected as a Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of 2012. Her fiction for adults and young adults includes Worldstone and Guardian of the Hills. She is also the co-founder of Writer Beware, a unique anti-fraud resource that provides warnings about literary schemes and scams. Victoria Strauss lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Visit her at www.victoriastrauss.com.

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    Reviews for Color Song

    4/5

    8 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I was most of the way through this book before realizing it was the second in a series. The way the author handles the plot lines from the first book are very well woven into this story just as building the characters' pasts.

      Normally my favorite part of a story is the character building and world building, and while I did love the way the characters learned about themselves and changed, I feel much is left unfinished and unresolved.
    • 5/5
      Color Song, A Passion Blue Novel by Victoria Strauss is a five star book. I loved it & highly recommend it. It is about artistic passion in fifteen century Venice. Giulla Borromeo disguised herself as Girolamo Landriani to become a painter's apprentice. She had escaped Santa Marta rather than being forced to take a nun's vows & never be able to paint after her master died."...she watched her teacher measure Passion blue onto her palette. It glowed like a sun-struck jewel..." I received a complimentary kindle copy from Skyscape Amazon Children's Publishing & NetGalley. That did not change my opinion for this review.
    • 4/5
      This review contains a few necessary spoilers for this book's predecessor, Passion Blue.Giulia thought her future was bound up within the artists' studio at the Convent of St. Marta, studying under her Maestra, Sister Humilita. But when Humilita becomes seriously ill, Giulia's future is in jeopardy. Once again Giulia finds herself fleeing from the convent, this time carrying the precious recipe for Passion Blue, Sister Humilita's signature paint color. Giulia's plan is to travel to Venice and find a position with Humilita's old friend, Master Painter Ferraldi. But if she is to succeed, she will have to disguise herself as a boy. Nobody must know that Ferraldi's new apprentice Girolamo is actually runaway novice Giulia, because there are still people in Padua who would do anything to get their hands on the recipe for Passion Blue . . . and not all of them are peaceful nuns.I was greatly impressed with Passion Blue, especially the way it changed up some of the common tropes of the young adult novel. Color Song is, in some ways, a little more traditional: a headstrong girl goes on an adventure and finds her place in the world (and even romance along the way). It's still an enjoyable read, well-researched and engaging, and I would recommend it to readers who enjoyed its predecessor.