by Lydia Ruffles

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for the chance to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
Publish Date: 7th September 2017

Title: The Taste of Blue Light
Author: Lydia Ruffles
Publisher: Hodder Children’s Books
Book: Standalone
Genre: Contemporary
Found: Netgalley
Rating: 3 Voodoos

What happened to you, Lux Langley,
to make your nightmares turn red?

These are the things Lux knows:
She is an Artist.
She is lucky.
She is broken.

These are the things she doesn’t know:
What happened after the party.
Why she ended up in hospital.
Why she is dreaming in red and screaming in the dark.

Desperate to uncover the truth, Lux’s time is running out. If she cannot piece together the events of that fateful night and regain control of her scorched and splintered mind, she will be taken away from everything and everyone she holds dear.

If the nightmares don’t take her first.

-Netgalley

I was so excited to read this book, I requested it from netgalley because of one of the postcards that came in the May Illumicrate box. It was blue and the writing on it said “What happened to you Lux Langley to make your nightmares turn red?” and the text fades from a bluer colour to red. ( A+ PR work!!) I thought it would be some kind of sci-fi book, but it’s not, it’s contemporary. I still read it though and it was quite interesting.

This is a contemporary story about a young woman who can’t remember what happened in the summer or why she now dreams in red. She’s a different person to who she was before and she knows she needs to get back to being that person but the only way she can see that happening is if she remembers what happened. She finds it hard enough to get through each day right now though.

This book mentions Synesthesia - the second I’ve picked up recently. From what I understand, it’s where you can taste colours and see sounds etc, it’s a perceptual condition that I’ve not come across before.

I found it sad that she kept trying to ‘reset’ herself, almost like a computer and I found it as hard to understand her as she did!
I’m trying very hard not to give anything away because I found that it was a very simple plot in the end and I never know what to write about this kind of book.

I found the first half of the book really slow, luckily I felt in picked up around 50%, if a book hasn’t caught me by then, I don’t continue with it.
This book is split into 2 parts and I wasn’t sure what part 2 was there for at first but I realised it’s there because this is not a story about the summer she forgot, it was a story about her making it out the other side.

I thought that Mei and Olivia were fantastic friends! I was a little worried they’d get fed up with her, she may have felt that way too and while they must have been frustrated at the least, they stuck around for her.
I wasn’t expecting the reveal at all, though I thought it was something in the same vein after her reaction at Halloween!
I really liked Cal, he was an interesting character I’d liked to have explored more. His involvement was interesting. He helped a LOT with out knowing it and I hope she tells him. I also wish she’d been a little more honest with him earlier on, but I guess it’s not her fault.

Not my usual book at all, but I don’t regret reading it.
Still going to pretend the postcard is about an epic Sci-Fi though…