The only reason it's not getting a 5 stars is that it didn't feel like one in a very arbitrary personnal way. If I had to give a less "it's not you, it's me" reason, I would say the ending is a bit easy, and the last competition had some plot issues between the getting the soul part and the prize that was to be won. But those are minor details.

Otherwise, in a more "it's not you, it's me", I'm not a music story girlie. I don't mind music centric stories, I just I'm not super interested. I don't mind them when I'm already reading the thing, but I won't go out of my way to choose a book about music. Music centric fictions kinda always feel a bit the same to me. What felt a little different here, which I liked, is the way some people playing their violin could almost create whole universe in the mind of the people listening. It was more than the usual "you remember the scent of X and the way your granma's cookie tasted", the writing went deeper, where musician could suck you in their memories at times, for example.

Anyway, to me, the real strenght of this story isn't exactly how music is portrayed, but how the struggle of every character is explored, how there wasn't many secondary or even tertiary character that didn't feel fully fleshed out and whole. Yet I didn't feel like I had whiplash from jumping POV, it didn't feel unnecessary (even when it maybe was). I was absolutely interested about each and every one of them. I also really enjoyed how aliens met earth demons, like hello? that's a great idea! It's not relevant until it is, so it's not a huge focus of the book, but it's creative and fun.

I'll be keeping an eye on this author for sure