Our Strange Duet is the story of the famous musical The Phantom of the Opera, but in this novel, it is told from Christine Daeé's point of view. The story follows exactly the plot and script as we know it from the musical. Only in this book, we delve deeper into the live of Christine. How she became a ballerina at the Opera Populaire, living under the wings of Madame Giry and her daughter and Christine's best friend, ballerina Meg Giry. The history of her father Gustave Daaé who was a musician, and how she met Raoul when she was a little girl, and how they always have been in love with eachother. After her interest in singing starts and she starts singing in her dressing room, which is next to the one of opera star Carlotta Guidicelli, who is not happy that Christine is apparently ''stealing her spot as a star''. To avoird further conflict with Carlotta, which becomes worse after the phantom causes an incident on stage, where Christine is blamed after trying to save Carlotta from an onriding set truck, she has to move to a different dressing room which is known at the opera to be somewhat haunted. She moves into her new dressing room though where she starts practicing to sing, and where a mysterious voice all of a sudden starts to coach her to become the best singer she can be. She believes this is her late father, who promised her to send her the Angel of Music when he would pass. She is deeply intrigued by this strange and mysterious voice which seem to come from behind the large dressing mirror in her dressing room. She later learns his name is Erik. When the two new directors, monsieur Firmin and monsieur André of the Opera Populaire arrive to replace the director, and Carlotta starts to sing Think of Me for the new directors during a rehearsel of the opera Hannibal, The Phantom sabotages this rehearsel by throwing a decor backdrop on almost on top of Carlotta. She refuses to sing the next weeks, and Christina has to replace her, as she is ready to sing on stage because Erik's coaching. And this is the start of a dangerous work relationship with the Phantom, while she is also seeing her sweetheart Raoul, the Vicomte de Chagny and important patron of the Opera Populaire. In this book, their relationship is shown more deeply, and we see more of both outside of the opera, which adds a new layer to the story and explains more. And meanwhile, Christine learns that Erik is just a man, and clearly not an 'Angel of Music'' as he starts sabotaging the Opera more and more to get his way, and deadly incidents happen with stagehand Joseph Boquet, and the falling chandelier, and Christine finds herself in the middle of all of this and has to choose between Raoul and the Phantom, and to keep or to stop singing and to choose for the life she wants.
Our Strange Duet is a magnificent and just brilliant novel of The Phantom of the Opera. It does nothing but honour the story as we already know it, but looking from Christine's point of view, it adds just more layers to the story, as we see her life inside and outside the opera (never knew she had her own little apartment in Paris) and we see her choices, thoughts and actions more clearly. Her relationship with Raoul seems so much more deeper in this novel, and I loved that the author chose to also show parts of their life outside of the opera, it added just so much to the story! I loved that the script of the musical version of the Phantom is used as we know it in this book. It truly does compliment eachother in this book. I absolutely enjoyed reading this book, it is just in one word phantastic and I recommend reading it!
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