I dont normally read teen and YA boy i was intrigued by the synopsis and decided to give it a go. It's one of those books that sneak up on you and keeps you thinking long after you've finished it. I was thinking of giving up half way but pleased that I didn't.

Lux has had a night out, blacks out and ends up in hospital but can't remember how or why. She's a complex character and difficult to connect with at first but with some understanding as the story unfolds I was rooting for her. I loved the exploration of memories that become trapped due to trauma and the power of the mind that can block them off from us if it thinks we cant cope with them yet. The books follows her journey of remembering and understanding what actually took place

A wholly original and fantastic story

Lux sees in colour. Colours have extra significance, feelings. Sometimes words and sounds have colours. Lux has synaesthesia, but unusually she wasn't born with it. She got it after a party, after she blacked out. The night had been so alive, fearless kids having fun. Magical, like something out of a film. That night she lost herself. Now, with migraines, and her life at Richedane (a boarding school for aspiring artists), she can just about keep it together. There's something she doesn't know, she must reach her old self. But that's difficult when all along you believe you're losing your mind.

From the beginning, I mentally labelled this book 'intriguing' and I was impatient to to know where it was going. This is one of those 'give this book a chance-you'll be surprised' reads because the moment you understand the significance of the title, you'll connect to the heart breaking story. Everything will mean something. All dots connected. This book was written so cleverly, it was fantastic.

This is not a thriller, and you'll ruin the experience for yourself if you go in thinking it to be such. For me, the book was slightly off mark because I thought synaesthesia would be explored more. It wasn't but the end made this book worth reading, regardless of the fact.

I received this book through NetGalley.

This was a DNF for me. I may try it again at a later point but I felt that Lex was hard to connected too. I didn't really feel a lot of anything towards her and needed more. I can say the story had a lot of promise but it wasn't enough to keep me going.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this captivating read.
Initially, Lux was not a character to feel empathy with. Her unwillingness to engage with things and people made her hard to care about. The environment in which she cloisters herself is alien to many of us.
Yet as the story progressed I found myself falling under a spell. Desperate to know what happened, we do get answers, and they are far more topical than we might expect.
This is one best to know little about before reading. It is not immediately seeking to attract your attention, but it sneaks up on you.

This is a beautifully written book, the story of a girl who has had a traumatic experience but does not remember what happened. As she goes back to her final year in the exclusive art school in London, she has to deal with aftershocks of what happened, including panic attacks, pain and partial amnesia. There she meets a boy, who plays a crucial part in her recovery of the lost memories. Lux, the main character, is completely defined by what has happened, without the knowledge of what in fact did occur, and feels an incredible sense of being lost. Her entire life is never going to be the same again. And as her memories come back in violent and central event, this does not change.

Overall this is a beautifully written novel that uses language to a great effect. Initially I couldn't understand why the girl does not ask or isn't told what happened, and the readers is left in an unease about this. Girl on the train comes to mind, which I think was intended. However, this is also the weakest point of the novel, as it seems so unbelievable, especially given the circumstances and implication of what in fact did happen. My other grumble is that once the memory comes back, a whole third of the book is devoted to her dealing with this, which I felt was a bit forced.

If you enjoy psychological mysteries, you very likely will enjoy this book, that is so well written and depicts the sadness that we feel when we feel disassociated from others.

I loved this book. It dealt with the effects of grief and memory loss beautifully and I found the main character to be complex and interesting

I liked this, it's quite similar to We Were Liars by E Lockhart but is good in and of itself. I liked Lux and most supporting characters, but felt there was so depth lacking overall. Still, I'd read something else by the same author.

I loved this. It was beautiful and sad but uplifting and absolutely does not go down the route you expect it to go based on the blurb – which just made it all the better.

Lux is recovering after a blackout and waking up in hospital with no memory of recent events. We join her around the time she rejoins her school and her friends – she is different, disturbed, an artist with a huge black hole threatening to swallow her, a girl who remembers the person she was but can’t seem to recapture it. Her parents worry it is too soon, her friends rally round, but Lux is both there and not there as she struggles with her inner demons.

The writing is edgy, emotive and really quite wonderful. The descriptive sense of how Lux is feeling, how she is taking this journey back to herself, is completely in the moment and real. I thought the setting was inspired – the school she attends is unconventional and allows for so much exploration of the wider themes here, it was all stunningly vibrant and really gripping.

A truly excellent look at life after trauma, some of the best parts of this come after the memory returns and we see Lux moving forward – it is, at that point, a story about how we can survive, adapt, yes even become different people altogether, when life throw us into the most horrific circumstances. How Lux reacts, how those around her do, it is all done with a delicate touch and some beautiful prose that really pulled you into that world and didn’t let go.

I adored this story from the moment I met Lux until the moment I regrettably left her behind. Contemporary Young Adult Fiction at it’s very best.

Highly Recommended.

This was a difficult read,dealing with serious events. We had to wade through a lot with Lux to get at the truth.

Lux wakes up in hospital and she can’t remember what happened. As she wrestles with what happened and struggles to remember the events her mental health deteriorates. Is it something to do with her parents? Is the art school she attends sinister? Are drugs involved? Is she the person to blame or do her friends have anything to do with it?

The book is beautifully written. There’s depth to it but whether this book is a positive experience or not hinges on one key question – what has actually happened to the main character? Thankfully I found the reveal to be satisfying and unexpected making this an excellent and compelling read. Indeed, the few intense chapters where Lux discovers what happened makes the rest of the book more insightful.

This is the debut book from Lydia Ruffles and I am impressed with her ability. In particular I enjoyed the way she uses colour to paint vivid pictures and bring an imaginative and thoughtful look at mental health.

The plot after the main reveal meanders occasionally but in an almost necessary way – it feels real. It's real life. Just when you’re wondering what else can happen, you are drawn back in with a tender moment.

Read this book – allow yourself to get caught up in Ruffles’ rich writing, allow yourself to feel the chaos and panic that Lux faces. In my opinion it is an important and relevant book that I wholeheartedly recommend.

This was a dark, dark boarding school story with a mystery that wasn't easy to guess. It's not hard to see why everyone is talking about this book.

I expected more from this. I struggled the whole time to really care about Lux or the majority of it. The reveal to why Lux couldnt remember was a shock but it felt like a let down.

This is a book that will stay with me, I think - my initial impressions were that this was just another book about spoilt rich kids at a boarding school and okay, maybe that’s a little bit true, but it’s so much more than that too. The world of Richdeane School was bizarre and compelling and just on the right side of unbelievable. Lux and her friends are Artists with a capital A, at a school like no other. Something has happened to Lux and she is unraveling. The book follows her through her journey to be put back together.

(I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review)

The Taste of Blue Light is set around Lux a student and her memory loss and the mystery surrounding what has her brain blocked out so she can't remember.

This book was very slow paced to start with and took until about 70% through until it all started to pull together.

Lux is a very complex character but I didnt feel emersed in the book at any point and I have been left feeling that it never quite fulfilled its potential

A difficult book to categorize, but a very interesting read. Lux is a complex, interesting character and her struggles felt real as I read through. The 'big reveal' wasn't, really, but it almost didn't matter; the secret wasn't the point, it was Lux's reactions to it that were important. A fantastic read, all in all.

The taste of the Blue light by Lydia Ruffles a four-star read that will bring a light in your life. This is a YA novel, but don’t allow that to pigeonhole this story, I’m almost 40 and I could identify with Lux Langley, she is just a young woman who has something happen that changes her whole being. Maybe I identified as I had two major life changes at a similar age, I moved to a different county alone at 17 and lost a parent soon after, so I understood the journey of discovery and how life changes can affect you. The mental health aspects of the book also intrigued me and were well written but did lack a tiny bit in places. Overall this was a great story and I couldn’t believe that this was a debut novel, the writer has a great talent that you don’t usually see in a debut.

This was a very intriguing book because not only is the story unusual but the main character is a very conflicting character. Her struggle comes across strongly but it can still be difficult to relate to her and her actions. You have to be in the right frame of mind for this book, it's not an easy read.

The Taste of Blue Light follows the journey of a young woman called Lux, an Artist at an elite British boarding school. Unlike most books featuring boarding schools, this book seemed to transcend the class divide. Lux wasn’t a girl with a life so distanced from most ordinary people’s as to be impossible to understand. The struggles she faced could affect any one of us.

The prose is hauntingly beautiful. This is a book to be savoured rather than devoured. I bookmarked so many different pages to re-read the words later that I might have to invest in a paper copy to fold down the corners.

I admire Ruffles' ability to track back in time and really take on the voice of an eighteen year old struggling to find herself. I've scarcely before read YA that felt so real. I also appreciated the sense of extension beyond the boundaries that YA usually sticks too.

The central mystery of The Taste of Blue Light, what will keep you reading through the slower chapters, is what happened after the party. The truth was not what I was expecting at all. When it came, suddenly and brutally with the force of a thousand tiny shocks, I was lost for words. In my head I had constructed a narrative of how I thought this book was going to go, how everything was going to end. What happened at the party. But what I found was nothing like what I had expected.

After the big reveal, things changed pretty quickly. The reasons for all of Lux's symptoms clear, there was something lost in the last chapters of the book. The mystery gone, it seemed as if the story was meandering towards the end of the track slowly once again. But I loved Lux, her friends and the boys she cared about, so I couldn't stop reading on to see if everything was going to be alright. Beautiful and haunting, this book is one of my unexpected favourites of the year so far. A must!

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and Lydia Ruffles for my Copy of The Taste of Blue Light. 
'I will find the old Lux and when I do I will climb back inside her and sew myself into her skin so I never get lost again.' 
Lux Langley is an artist, she writes amazing stories and goes to an exclusive school which is only for the best artists in the world. She spends her days forgetting what mainstream subjects she's learned, and her nights at decadent parties, lighting fireworks, taking drugs and dancing with her equally fun friends.
A month after the leaver's party, Lux wakes up in hospital with no recollection of how she got there. The last thing she remembers is going to a party with some of the people she was working with at the Gallery where she was an intern. Despite Doctors attempts to help her recall her memories, Lux returns to school trying to grasp at some normality while still not knowing what is wrong with her. Now back at school she has migraines, flashes of weird colours and scary episodes of anger and distress to deal with. Who is the real Lux Langley and will she ever find her?

This is a passionate, incredibly emotional novel, which I think readers of John Green and E Lockhart will really enjoy. Lux is a complex character who one can neither love, nor hate. Nor pity in all honesty. Lux's character is too strong to pity, which leaves you with a hodgepodge of emotions towards her and her struggles. Most of the novels focus on the interior life of Lux as she tried to adjust to her old life when she is no longer the old Lux.
'Sometimes I want to be the kind of person who makes life easier for other people. And sometimes I wish everyone I love would die so I wouldn’t have to worry about hurting them anymore.' 
Many of Lux's feeling are relatable, particularly if you have ever suffered with anxiety, depression or similar mental illnesses. Her journey is rife with emotion, and frankly I could not put this book down, nor because the story was gripping and fast paced (in the way that say a crime thriller is) but because it was so emotionally charged. I was desperate to know what had happened to Lux but I was happy with the slow pace of the novel to break it to me gently.
A truly beautiful novel which everyone should read.