What a corker of a book! This book is jammed back with such vivid colour and description, it may make your eyes hurt. A pretty hard thing to read once you find out what happened but the ending is nice. All bad things will eventually subside and we'll grow from it.

I didn’t really take to the main character, Lux, in this book. One thing I can say, though, is that Ruffles is an extraordinary writer. She writes very intelligently and articulately. But that rather-too-adult intelligence and articulateness didn’t give credibility to eighteen/nineteen-year-old Lux, the narrator of the story. I would have been more comfortable with this in third person POV.

Lux, a (female) student at the Richdeane art school (for rich privileged teenagers), goes to a party and wakes up in hospital with an arm injury and no recollection at all of how she got there. As she spends most of her recreational time getting drunk and getting high, there's probably an obvious explanation for her blacking out and therefore not remembering how she got there. I never expected what actually landed Lux in hospital, and I enjoyed that element of surprise, but it still didn’t endear me to this character, who, despite her trauma, remained rude, ungrateful and simply not very nice at all. It was very hard to engage with her. If that was Ruffles' intention, then job done. If not, it's a misfire.

The truth is revealed at about twenty-five percent from the end, and the story just goes a bit flat after that…three quarters of it seemed rather incongruous.

I liked the writing but the main character not so much.

Have to file this one under DNF. Lydia Ruffles certainly has talent as some of the passages were just beautiful, amongst the loveliest description I have read recently. However, whilst the concept is interesting I just found the characters and the setting a little too indulgent and far-fetched for their story to grip me and I found myself becoming irritated by their decisions and dialogue.

This was a slow, frustrating book even though there were some quality messages hidden within. It deals with post-traumatic stress in teenagers which is an important topic. The main character is unpredictable, immature and obsessive. I'm not sure why any of her friends stick by her. There has been some serious incident that she cannot remember but it seems to have altered her personality. The reader is given hints that something happened but no clues to what it might be. And progress comes too slowly. When the curtain is finally drawn back it feels like an anti-climax. It's a brave attempt but overall I expected more.

A brilliant new talent, not just for Young Adult audiences but one to watch for well crafted, unputdownable novels.

I found this book really hard to get into and struggled to empathise with the main character. It was worth persevering with and the ending was very good. I would recommend this to students as they are the target audience but as an older reader some of the implausibility made it a struggle to read.

This book took me a while to read but in the end it was well worth it! I think the plotting in the middle was a little slow, but the representation of PTSD and trauma survival was fantastic.

Interesting book and characters but at the same time i did not connect to the characters

To be fair. I quite fancied this book. But I wasn’t gripped. Finishing it seemed quite a chore for me personally which I very rarely have in a book

I found it hard to get in to this book initially but once in to it, I found it fairly engrossing. We begin the book aware that ‘something’ has happened to Lux and that she may have witnessed *something* but we aren’t told much more. Lux becomes more and more angry with the way others have treated her ‘since the blackout’ especially her own parents. She feels disconnected to the world and her own body at times and is frustrated that Drs can not give her any answers or help her to feel connected again. Having previously been a user of recreational drugs at her private creative arts school, she worries that this is the cause.
Gradually through flashbacks we learn of the previous year at school and how it led up to ‘the blackout’ about her relationship with her best friends, staff at her school and her parents and her own relationship with her talent and her permissive school.
At the end of the book we learn what ‘the blackout is’ and it isn’t what we think (or at least, what the author was leading us to believe and the reason why Lux thinks she is being treated differently by everyone is very different to Lux’ imaginings.
I felt a bit flat when the big reveal came. Personally I would have handled the subject matter in a different way than the author did but that is my personal preference.
I found that I wanted a lot more detail about the story such as a better understanding of the schools ethos, methods of grading their pupils, pupils directions after leaving the school but I am a very nutty gritty details led reader! Not bad, but not great.

Please give this a go even if you’re an adult. It’s beautiful and thought provoking. It’s about a student artist who loses hours and has amnesia.

This book was hard to get into. I don’t want to add spoilers but the reveal was a real shocker. I would recommend this book but I would warn the person reading it they may have to persevere for a while before they get to the good bits. It is worth it though.

A unique and hauntingly beautiful story about trauma. sorrow, friendships, love and healing.

Overall this is a really good read. I found this book really hard to get into. A few times I nearly gave up but I am glad I persevered. I feel it took too long to reveal what was wrong with Lux. Once I knew that a lot of things that had happened made sense. Knowing earlier might have helped me enjoy the book more.

This book was very cleverly written. I really struggled to read it up until the reveal. In my opinion it should have been revealed earlier as it was mainly just frustrating not knowing why she was like she is. The reveal completely shocked me though (no spoilers). It was completely different to anything you normally read and very topical.
A very sensitive subject dealt with really well. The school sounds too good to be true but I still really want to go there!

The Taste of Blue Light is one of the best YA novels I’ve ever read. I cried like a baby when Lux recovers her memories.

I struggled to put this book down every time I picked it up. Lux’s story was so compelling and well-written I had to find out what happened to her. Why did she end up in hospital? What do her migraines and nightmares mean? Why are her dreams red? Why can’t she remember?

Lux narrates the story. First person POV is one of my favourite’s when it’s done well and Lux is spot in. I loved her voice and being on a journey with her as she tried to work out what had broken inside her and why.

Lux recovers her memories and life sucker-punches her. She realises how many people she has in her life who love her. She realises it is possible to recover from trauma but it can take a long time. I loved being in her head as she comes full circle and really starts to heal.

The Taste of Blue Light is amazing.

The book was interesting, and while it took me a while to get into, by the end I was really enjoying it. Lux is a difficult character to connect with, and like, but I feel like once you get accustomed to her the book is a lot more enjoyable. Her journey with her memory loss is well written, and you really feel as though you are going on this journey with her to recover what happened to her over summer.

I thought the writing style of this book was very strong and visceral, strongly evoking what Lux felt and believed. I struggled quite a bit with the subject matter and what Lux went through, and I think it was this that kept me from fully engaging with the book.

I think a lot of YA readers will enjoy trying to work out what happened to Lux but this one wasn't for me.

Horrible story and did not make myself finish this book. Sorry.

This novel started out incredibly strongly, both in the way it was written and in it's opening scene of the passion of young artists.

Although the rest of the novel is written just as lyrically the story looses traction pretty quickly as plot is lost in decorative descriptions of feelings and thoughts of the main character Lux.

Though I was intrigued to find out what had happened to the protagonist - the journey to that discovery mostly fell flat through one dimensional events meant to set her back and cause a reaction. When events finally do come to fruition it was one of the biggest disappoints. The discovery only helped to distance me further from the story and the characters instead of drawing me nearer.

Although they weren't given too much substance there was something I really liked about all the subsidiary characters, from Lux's two best friends, to her parents and her therapist. Also Loved the idea of the kids who grew up too quickly as they were taught to give into the arts, and the adults who encouraged them to do so.

Overall by the end I wasn't quite sure what the conclusion was supposed to mean, how things were resolved -
if they were resolved, and what the point of it all was. The heart of the story felt misplaced.