Verdict: A synesthesiastic tale of dealing with loss.

When Leigh's mother commits suicide, she visits Leigh as a bright red bird. Leigh follows her mother's memories to Taiwan to meet her grandparents for the first time and to try to understand her mother's passing.

For a book so sad, it's very colourful. Leigh often shares her emotions as colours and it works very well, especially as the book travels through a whole river of emotions. It shows a battle lost, families broken, and the dark struggles of depression through the lives of Leigh and her family.

To anyone affected by depression and suicide, this book contains those triggers. I felt it handled these themes with tender care and respect, without glamorising suicide or mental illness. The author also went to great lengths to portray a single instance of depression, and even clarifies at the end note that the story isn't mean to explain away depression, just show it for the illness it is.

Leigh is Taiwanese-American, although she starts off knowing very little about her Asian heritage. I'm a huge fan of East Asian culture, so I really enjoyed learning about Taiwan. It adds something to the novel that a book set solely in American could not.

I found the relationships in this book more relatable than most: the dissonance of wanting her dad home, but also looking forward to a night without parents so she can be creative; the liking someone, and someone liking you, and yet how impossible it is to talk about it; an argument one moment, the next moment like it never happened. I think this is a testament to how well crafted the characters are throughout the whole story.

It's not quite a five star book for me. Despite the fantastic writing and wonderful setting, the plot just didn't excite me at any point. It didn't have that insatiability factor to keep me reading, and the twists weren't too shocking. It felt like a gentle, long exploration of Taiwan and a teenager's memories. I liked all of the book, but I didn't fall in love this time.

That said, I'm glad I read it. The prose is beautifully crafted, and as a writer, I feel I've learned a lot about colour and emotions.

Source: With thanks to the publishers via NetGalley.com.

“There’s no point in wishing. We can’t change anything about the past. We can only remember. We can only move forward.”
― Emily X.R. Pan, The Astonishing Color of After

The Astonishing Colours of After traces Leigh’s journey from the point when her mother commits Suicide to her discovering her past . The author has tried to bring some real life perspective to the YA Fiction as the because the book deals with issues including Suicide and Depression. Only this year did I read John Green ‘s Turtles All the Way Down and I could sight some similarities in the storyline .

Leigh’s mother has turned into a bird after her death and guides her all the way . Leigh even travels to Taiwan , where she meets her Grandmother and Grandfather for the first time. This book is not a dark kind of BOOK but it’s a book in which Leigh tries to figure out what went wrong in her mother’s life which compelled her to suicide. This book also takes Leigh into a journey through Taiwan . She wants her hometown for the first time . I totally loved the Author’s perspective on Taiwan and I could feel her love for the country.

Leigh is superb character and I totally loved her from the first page . Axel (Leigh’s best friend and crush) Is another lovable character of the book . The book deals with their friendship cum love story which makes it a delightful read which I devoured at a one sitting. The book deals with so many themes at once , I mean I loved the Author’s writing style.

"There's no point in wishing. We can't change anything about the past. We can only remember. We can only move forward."

When Leigh's world is turned upside down by the death of her mother, she finds herself desperately trying to figure out what her mother wants her to remember. Visited by a red bird Leigh is convinced is her mother reincarnated, she ends up in Taiwan, following footsteps, and opening doors long since closed.



This wonderful world of magical realism, was extremely thought provoking, and encapsulated the ways in which different people experience grief brilliantly. When her mother commits suicide, Leigh feels like she has to put the pieces together to solve the reason why. Unable to come to terms with the truth, and feeling guilty for not being there to stop it, Leigh runs from events of that day, determined to find some form of answer, and if possible, save her mother's tormented soul.

I went into this novel knowing very little about the premise. From an outward view, the story focused on a girl who kisses her best friend on the day her mother commits suicide, and subsequently on how she deals with her grief. What lies beneath the surface was an emotional journey that discussed not only the subject of grief, but also things such as difficult family dynamics, race, and (a wonderful) culture.

One thing I didn't expect was the role colour would play throughout the story. Exploring the use of art and colour to define emotion and imagery in such a unique way, really added depth. Initially I struggled to understand what the author was referring to, which makes sense when you consider each person would associate different feelings with different colours, but as the story progressed, it became much more beautiful and poetic. Leigh as the central character is dependent on her art as a coping mechanism, and the use of colour was extremely poignant, when you consider her preferred material to work with; charcoal.

To see the story told from Leigh's perspective was also interesting. Looking at her relationship with her parents, both together and on an individual basis, there were so many things Leigh never realised. Shielded from her mothers illness, a large focus of the story was on Leigh's newly discovered understanding of what led to her mother's unfortunate ending, and the way in which her grief was explored was handled wonderfully. Convinced the bird she sees is her departed mother, Leigh sets out to try and remember whatever it was her mother wished for, but throughout the book, Leigh's mentality is questioned, as more and more things fall apart with each and every memory recovered.

There were moments where you questioned whether what Leigh was seeing and hearing were actually happening, or whether they were a part of her decline into madness. Unable to come to terms with everything in such a short space of time, Leigh becomes almost delirious, adamant the bird will just appear, that the walls will stop disappearing, and that the world will become alright again, if only she can capture the bird and beg it to tell her what she needs to know. Of course, there were times when the magical realism was easily observed, with things such as the memories from before Leigh was born being a clear example, as she wouldn't know those things herself. It was during these moments I really started to enjoy the books.

With each memory, more of the story was unlocked, pulling me further in, until eventually you understood just why Leigh was trying to blame herself for the unfortunate events. A mixture of these memories were explored, with some coming from the 'bird', and others coming from Leigh's own memory, coming to terms with the events of the day everything fell apart. During these moments, we saw the decline of her relationship with her father as he tried to protect her from the truth, and pushed her towards a stable future, as well as the complications of coming from a mixed race family. Her mothers story was perhaps the most poignant, as we saw life before, during and after, allowing a stronger connection to the characters.

Emily X R Pan did a fantastic job of tackling the difficulty of grief, especially one caused by mental illness. You really felt for the characters, even those who possessed a language barrier, or were less involved in the story. I found myself feeling a stronger connection to Leigh's mother as you watched her try and fight the mental illness and effectively lose, but what really struck home was Leigh's blaming of herself for why it happened. We all try and find someone to blame, and in the most dire circumstances, we find ourselves questioning what we could have done differently to prevent what actually happened. Leigh did this persistently through the book, and it was something I found myself relating to much too much. In other novels where grief is explored, I often find myself resenting the main protagonist as they question their involvement, but Emily manages to make a convincing character, stricken by grief, who doesn't just let it overwhelm her, and for that I have to applaud her.

Overall, this was a wonderful debut, full of magic and emotion, with a poetic use of colour. The way in which grief is explored and addressed, as well as the tackling of mental health, was done beautifully, and I would encourage anyone strong enough to read this piece of art. Of course, it should be mentioned there are trigger warnings throughout this book for those who struggle with mental health, and this should be taken into consideration, however the prose and storyline are so unique and beautiful, it encapsulates the way in which mental health affects people brilliantly. Given that this is such a strong debut, I would quite happily pick up another book by Emily in the future.

Beautiful and heartbreaking, this will definitely be one of my top 10 books of the year.

The Astonishing Color of After follows Leigh Chen Sanders in the wake of her mother's suicide as she attempts to come to terms with what has happened and find closure. Leigh believes her mother has become a bird and travels to Taiwan to meet her estranged maternal grandparents in a quest to try and find her mother (in bird form) and discover more about the woman she was.

From the very first page the lyrical prose caught me in a kind of trance and I found myself endlessly reading. I'm amazed to see that this book is 480 pages long because I sped through it without even noticing.

I'm generally not the hugest fan of magical realism. I sometimes find that it just confuses me and makes the plot get tangled up in my head, however, in this book I found it enriched the story beautifully. Grief is such a difficult thing to explain but the magical realism mixed with the cultural Taiwanese and Chinese beliefs worked so well in exploring the subject.

The subjects of mental health and suicide was treated very sensitively and though a lot of the book was Leigh trying to reconcile why her mother comitted suicide, I also found it very moving that the book looked at Leigh's feelings of guilt as she desperately looks back to see whether her or her Dad could have prevented this from happening.

Learning about Taiwanese culture was fascinating and I loved Leigh's sweet developing relationship with her grandparents. I did guess the twist in the story but I didn't feel disappointed for not having a big reveal. In fact, I was relieved that I was correct because it added to the beautiful feeling of closure I got at the end of the book.

Shoutout to NetGalley (like usual) for giving me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

A description of the book: Leigh – half Asian and half white – is certain that her mother turned into a bird when she died by suicide. She travels to Taiwan to meet her grandparents for her first time, and she’s determined to find her mother in bird form. She ends up chasing after ghosts and uncovering family secrets while making a new relationship with her grandparents.

I’m very conflicted about what star rating to give this, because I feel like it deserves a high one? But, three stars is ‘liked it’, and four stars is ‘really liked it’, and I think I just ‘liked it’. So three stars isn’t a bad rating.

Things I liked:
• So. Much. Food.
• The exposure to Chinese/Taiwanese culture and learning about it
• The execution of magical realism/religion
• Reiterated the biological aspect of depression
• The writing is b e a u t i f u l and I love the use of colour metaphors
• It doesn’t romanticize suicide
• There’s resources for people seeking support and/or have lost someone to suicide at the end of the book

Things I didn’t like:
• It’s long
• It moves very quickly
• It jumps around a lot between the present, Leigh’s memories, and the memories of other people
• I didn’t feel like we got to know too much about the characters now, just their pasts
• Axel uses a girl as a ‘distraction’ from someone else
• In some places, the description was Too Much
• They describe emotions using unfamiliar colours so I didn’t really know what they were feeling??
• I still don’t really understand why Leigh wanted to find her mother or what she wanted to get out of it

So, in conclusion, this book is beautiful. It can start discussions on depression and suicide that would usually be avoided, and it goes into so much detail about different treatments and how they might not work for everyone. It introduces the readers to (potentially) new cultures in an honest and exciting way.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

I liked the way this story was written, how the author used colour to describe feelings, I had an inkling that was going to happen going into the story and I wasn't disappointed. This story is very artistic, there is a lot of emphasis placed on colour and music and how they make you feel and in turn represent feelings. If I was more arty I would have loved this book more, while I found the approach interesting I couldn't entirely relate and so the book wasn't as magical or thought provoking as it should have been.

The logical part of me thinks colour is subjective. What I might consider purple, you may think is pink and this is further confused when applying colour to emotions. Colour has been used beautifully through this book to describe an emotion or feeling but at times I felt it was inaccurate as to what I would consider the colour of an emotion to be. What you are left with then is a character that is at times harder to understand and relate to, when the colour was right it was right but when it was wrong it was wrong. Colour is so differently interpreted even across cultures let alone individual people and while I loved the concept a lot I think it changed my reading experience slightly. 

In the beginning we are presented with a mystery, Leigh is an average teenage girl who returns home one day to find her mother has killed herself. On the day of her mother's funeral her mother seemingly returns as a bird who wants her to go to her grandparents in Taiwan. The story is told in both the present and flashbacks and memories as Leigh tries to workout the last thing that her mother wanted to know before she killed herself. 

"I want you to remember" scribbed on a note that was dumped in the bin. But what does she want Leigh to remember?

It felt like this story was on a loop - scenes were repeated so many times I started to get annoyed. There were moments that mattered, that were made important by Leigh's feelings or thoughts, but when these moments were repeated they mattered less and less. I got bored of how many times I read about Leigh not being able to sleep, how many times she discussed or thought of the bird, how much she envied Feng and felt like a stranger with her grandparents, how much she clearly liked her best friend but thought she had ruined it. It went on and on. It felt like this story was a handful of very original thoughts that were recycled again and again.

The most poignant part of the book for me was in the last few chapters. All the magic of the bird sightings and the incense did nothing to convey the grief like the conversation between Leigh and her dad at the end. Whilst I love magical realism I didn't feel like it added much to this story in the end. 

DISCLAIMER: I was given this eARC by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I'm not surprised there's been so much hype around this book - the writing is truly beautiful, the setting vivid, and the main characters engaging and endearing. The magical realist aspect was expertly done, and I loved how it linked in with the MC's family's Taiwanese culture and religion. I really think this is a future classic, it was a joy to read.

Okay so unpopular opinion time…I wasn't that enthusiastic about the book...let me explain myself but first let me say the main topic of the book is suicide and depression.

When Leigh’s mother takes her own life Leigh wants to find out who she really is and where her mother is from. Leigh fly’s to Taiwan on a journey of discovery of her family and of herself, to complicate matters further her maternal family don’t see eye to eye with Leigh’s father plus there is Axel, Leigh’s best friend but things got complicated.

The beginning was slow, I was 100 pages in and really wanted to give up there was nothing that captured my imagination forcing me to keep reading but I did anyway. While it did get a little better it’s not my cup of tea, too many things just didn’t sit right with me.

First, the book was long, longer than normal YA’s and it didn’t feel like it was the kind of book that draws you, that makes you want to pick it up. In fact, I read it over about a month, not that much was drawing me in. The next thing that put me off was Leigh and Axel using colours to describe their feelings, it didn’t work for me it was really off-putting in all honesty.

Normally I’d be wanted to root for Leigh, getting behind her and believe in what she was doing but I couldn’t connect with her apart from art who was she? I don’t think she was developed enough as a character there was too much missing. In contrast, though I really liked Axel, how he was portrayed and the feeling shown from his side they felt true and passionate.

The book has many times been described as magical realism, I’ve never read something like it and in all honesty, I don’t think I would again. The magical aspect really drew away from the grief that was felt and the family heritage that was being discovered, that what I would have loved to have read, a journey of discovery of culture and family without the distraction of confusing magicalness.

The book has three different styles of chapters the present, memories and smoke which where nicely weaved together. I never felt like I got lost in time and always knew where I was, that was helped by the different symbols at the top of each chapter, a very nice touch.

I really liked the way Pan cares about depression and shows this from the inclusion of helplines at the back. If Pan writes a new novel I think I’d still pick it up but only if the magical aspect had been taken out and a different depth was there.

Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for giving me a copy of the book in exchange for this, an honest review

’m not generally a fan of magical realism, so I probably shouldn’t have chosen this book. As well as that, I found it very hard to get into it, putting it down frequently, and reading a few other books while this was still on my Kindle. I’m not sure what it was. Perhaps I’m too much of a neanderthal to appreciate the lyrically written prose or the interesting synesthesia elements of the main character’s narrative. Perhaps it’s that I’m not an artist and don’t see the world the same way that Leigh does. Maybe it’s even that I didn’t know what most of the colours she was listing for her feelings look like. My understanding of colours is limited to fairly basic colour names, as I’m a pleb.

But that said, once I did actually get into this book, there was a lot of really lovely stuff in there. Leigh’s relationship with her father, her mother’s mental health struggles, the difficulty of being a biracial child in two different cultures, and the struggles of families, and taking back something you didn’t mean – all of these were really wonderfully written and I thoroughly enjoyed what I read when I finally stopped faffing about and actually read it.

For me, personally, this wasn’t my favourite book of the year. But given that it’s a writing style that I don’t particularly appreciate, and a genre that I’m not a fan of, and a main character whose head I found it hard to get into, it’s not surprising that this wasn’t my favourite.
However, I can recognise that this book is very, very good. It’s just not for me. If you’re an artist, if you like beautifully written books, and if you like magical realism, then you will probably find this book to be utterly, heartbreakingly perfect.

If ‘Grief Is The Thing With Feathers’ by Max Porter was Young Adult (and well longer granted), it would be kind of like this book. The links to birds and loss are reminiscent of the themes in that book and it’s done just as beautifully and poetically in this book as the other.

The character development and the slow building romance of the book and the cross culture perspectives, giving glimpses into Taiwanese/Chinese culture, just make this one of those books that just keeps on giving until the very last chapter as it reaches it’s perfect conclusion. There is just so much good to talk about in this book as we get to know Leigh and the situation she’s in, keeping you hooked - this book is impossible to put down.

I heard of this book when Hannah/A Clockwork Reader chose it for her NOVL box, I think(?) and when she recommends books I take them seriously so when I saw you could request this I knew I had to and it never disappoints. One of the best debuts I’ve ever read, Pan’s writing breeds emotion, you’re going to suffer reading this book, but you are going to be so glad you did.

(I received an ARC for review).

Leigh is only sixteen when her mother dies by suicide, leaving nothing but the words, “I want you to remember.” And this leads her on a journey to Taiwan in search of a bird, to meet the grandparents she never knew and hopefully learn about the life her mother never spoke about.

I can tell you it’s been a while since I finished a book and immediately started sobbing after completing it. The Astonishing Color of After was a wonderful, visually and writing-wise, novel about grief and family. There’s just so much to it. It’s a mystery with Leigh uncovering secrets her mother buried years ago through memories. But it’s also a love story as Leigh struggles with her relationship with her best friend, Axel. Her mother’s passing changes everything. And both sides of the story are equally beautiful and enthralling. But the family is the heart and strength of this story, and it indeed is so astonishing.

There’s also a magical element to this novel. Leigh experiences the past in the form of burning incense and items such as photographs, and she’s able to experience her family history from the perspectives of her family members. This allowed her to understand what she never could before and to accept the daunting choices that were made. This aspect of this was so, so gorgeous and Pan’s style made this so stunning to experience.

Overall, there are so many words to describe this novel: stunning, extraordinary, beautiful, gorgeous. The lyrical prose, Leigh’s strength and struggles as she tries to connect with a past she wishes she knew and while accepting a new future. She finds what she needed, and the ending was so satisfying. A beautifully-told story, and one that I’ll definitely remember.

Such a heartbreaking emotional read.
This is a book I struggled to put down. If I had the time I would of devoured it in one sitting. I was captivated by the beautiful writing.

I loved this book - it was beautifully written and life affirming to read. It dealt with some really hard issues - suicide, depression, guilt and grief - but found a positive outcome for all. Cultural difference, family breakdown and the importance of family were all explored.

The characters were well drawn and believable. The memories gave me as the reader the opportunity to fill in the background to the story - were her experiences real? Did ghosts really appear for her? You can decide - it does not matter - they were real to Leigh and helped her be brave enough to face her fears and move on.

A book I will be highly recommending.

If this was a film I'd call it Oscar-Bait. One of those films designed with one thing in mind; be unique and ground-breaking. To have 'heart' and sweep all of the awards. And it is beautiful.
I'll describe it as trying to explain colors to a blind person using the most poetic language possible.
I really wanted to like it as it is wonderfully unusual and evoking but at the same time I do feel it's slightly pretentious.