• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2020 May #2
  *Starred Review* It's 1348. Orphaned and impoverished, 16-year-old Edyth is remanded to a priory to be a conversa, not a nun but a laborer. There she is assigned to the scriptorium, where she will learn to mix pigments. The colors are brilliant and inevitably remind her of her secret: she has synesthesia and thus sees sounds as colors. No one knows this, not even John Mason, a boy from her village for whom she has tender feelings; she is astonished when he shows up with a group of other stonemasons to rebuild the priory's chapel. The two steal time together, falling in love, but when they are discovered, the sub-prioress, Agnes, beats Edyth in punishment. When the kind prioress learns of Edyth's synesthesia and of a terrible dream the girl has had, she believes the dream to be prophetic, pronouncing Edyth a visionary. For indeed a terrible force strikes in the form of the Black Death. What does Edythe's vision have to do with this, and what will it mean for her relationship with John? The book—told in Edyth's first-person voice—is beautifully written, richly imaginative, and graced with fully realized characters. Parts are melodramatic, yes, but compelling nonetheless. As in What the Night Sings (2018), Stamper illustrates the story, making it a feast for fans of historical fiction with a magic twist. Grades 9-12. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Vesper Stamper was born in Nuremberg, Germany and raised in New York City. She married filmmaker Ben Stamper right out of college, and together they have two wildly creative children.When Vesper earned her MFA in Illustration from School of Visual Arts, Ben gave her an orange tree. She illustrates and writes under its leaves and blossoms at her grandfather's old drafting table, in the pine woods of the Northeast. Follow her on Twitter at @vesperillustrat and on Facebook at @vesperillustration, and learn more at vesperillustration.com.