"Even though you sometimes saw yourself as a burden, the truth is... you were the one always helping others. Including me."
"Back then, I hated the piano. I kept asking myself why I even played. My music only ever brought pain-my parents died, and even my only friend lost her life because of it."
"But then you came and told me... that my piano could bring happiness to others. You said it made you happy to hear me play. Miss Chon, do you know..."
"That your words brought me so much joy?"
"In all my life, I never thought I could be the reason someone smiled. You were the first one, the only one-who made my world feel beautiful."
"So if this truly is the last moment we'll have together... I want you to feel happy listening to the song we created. And I want you to hear everything I feel for you-through this melody."
maaannn, I must’ve cried this year’s worth of tears. The amount of times I had to reach out for a box of tissue, which I can still count on one hand, but still…
If I also had a nickel for each time I couldn’t read the words clearly anymore because of the natural process of cleaning out dirt from my eyes, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot but it’s weird it happened twice.
Anyway, I knew what I got myself into when reading this novel cus I kinda got spoiled but I wanted a change as for someone who’s read tons of gl novels by now with “happy endings”. It did not disappoint. Clearly.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
PIAnist was a gorgeous read from beginning to end. Touching on themes of talent vs. hard work, musical expression, freedom, how childhood fame affects you, disability, and of course following your dreams, i was always highlighting one thing or another and always felt like i was learning. Throughout the book, i was really taken by Pia’s struggle with her talent. She thought it brought everyone pain and struggle because of her past, which led her to hate the piano and run away from it. I love how just one simple compliment from Chon saying “your piano can make people happy” really started to unravel Pia and allow her to open her heart again. Their romance was so precious to me even if it didn’t progress much. It was deep and special because you could tell they healed each other as they went through life. Rachel and Ryu were also super important to this story and really captured me and made me root for them a lot. Ryu’s struggle of lacking natural talent and trying to compensate for that by working himself to the point of injury juxtaposed with Pia’s conflict of hating her natural talent. Their student-teacher bond that slowly shifted to a sibling-like bond was really precious to me. The flaw I would point out is that occasionally the book kinda briefly forgets Chon is blind or is a bit awkward about her blindness at times. Things like saying Chon keeps her eyes closed most of the time, saying she looked somewhere, or even just some of the situations like when Chon followed Pia in the taxi really aren’t realistic with the disability. I really enjoyed this book even though it had me bawling my eyes out at the end😭😭😭 It almost reminds me of the anime Your Lie In April. I definitely recommend giving this a read :)