What a great anthology!!

The idea behind this anthology was music. Do you ever hear a song and picture the story the music is telling? Well this is an entire book of just that, short stories describing the songs. It features many, many authors and just as many musicians. Some stories are personal experiences (looking at you G. Love) while some stories are purely fiction (looking at you Jonathan Maberry). Each story was different and I honestly enjoyed most of them. I loved listening to the song before reading the story so I could get my mindset where the author is.

Just a little biased here, but Ellen Hopkins wrote an amazing story inspired by The Eagles' Hotel California, even includes lyrics from the song (which is hilarious to me because I regularly slip song lyrics into every day conversations). The wonderful, Suzanne Young wrote a great story inspired by Jimmy Eat World's The Middle, which included lots of emotions you go through growing up and honestly may have been my favorite story in the anthology.

Overall, it was a great read and I would definitely suggest it to music lovers everywhere.

K.M. Walton penned a special message about this book and what it means to her!

If you liked this but want a book that is more personal, check out my review of Party Of One by Dave Holmes!!

I'm so thankful that Sourcebooks Fire and NetGalley provided me an advanced copy of Behind the Song, which is out now!

What an awesome Idea to pair music with short stories. We all feel more creative when we connect to our favorite music. So why not write down the stories that the music leads us to. This is exactly what an amazing group of YA authors and musicians have done. Starting a new story was like moving through your favorite song playlist on a lazy summer afternoon.

I was so excited to pick up Behind the Song but found myself disappointed with most of the short stories. I was expecting this anthology to not only have essays and short stories inspired by certain songs but that the theme in the stories itself would be music too and because that wasn't the case, I felt very underwhelmed by this overall.

I found a lot of the short stories to be super absurd and weird. I wasn't expecting to get such a range of different stories without any connecting point. I thought that music would always be IN the story as well but it wasn't. So there's really no way to determine if you're gonna enjoy this anthology.
Overall I enjoyed the essays way more than the short stories. Because the essays focused on music, be it a musician writing about the song writing process or an author writing about how a certain song inspired them, the music was always part of the essay as well. This is exactly what I was looking for and what I had hoped this anthology would be. My favourite was by far “The Opposite of Ordinary” by Beth Kephart. The way she described how a song made her feel and how it inspired her, was very special but also relatable.
A short story that I really enjoyed was “The Ride” by Suzanne Young. It was clearly inspired by a song but it was also IN the story, even though it wasn't a big part of it. But Young was able to write short story that reflected what I had wanted lots more of the stories to be. It was inspiring and uplifting and made a connection to music.

Overall I would say if you are a fan of anthologies that feature a lot of different stories, you will find that in this book. If you're looking for an anthology that talks about the power of music and how much it can influence people, you should looks elsewhere.
A video review will be up on my YouTube channel on August 25th.

I am all about music, YA, and anthologies so BEHIND THE SONG was sure to be a hit for me. This incredible anthology hit it out of the park and I am thrilled to share it with you all today.

A few reasons I loved Behind the Song (and I think you will, too):
Each author is at their complete best. I've read or interacted with most of the authors (though not the musicians) so I have a sense of their personality. Their stories were so their own that I couldn't help but smile. I especially appreciated Ellen Hopkins' story (I haven't read her stuff before) and EC Myers (who writes an amazing speculative fiction piece that is so deep I felt like I needed to decompress after I read it).
The personal essays. Jonathan Maberry gets REAL in his and it was fun to see G. Love and Donn T write about their songs and experiences with music.
A good mix of stories. From the non-fiction to the fantasy to the cute contemporary (OMG Tiffany Schmidt's story), this anthology has a mix of everything.
It's KM Walton's story that really surprised me. I haven't read anything by her previously but her story (which is the last story) really stood out. I may have shed a tear (or ten).

Highly recommend this anthology!