The Astonishing Color of After

Beautifully written with enough magical realism to be interesting but not overwhelming. I liked the art/colors/synethesia elements and that the bulk of the story took place in Taiwan (and the audiobook gave me all the real Chinese). The friendship/romantic elements dragged and the book as a whole didn't need to be 450 pages. Definitely deserving of the APALA Honor recognition but at that length and with a slow burning plot I'm going to have a hard time finding an audience for this book.

Just WOW. The Astonishing Color of After is about a teenage girl, an artist, dealing with her mother's depression and ensuing suicide. Part of what makes the book so fascinating is Leigh's constant description of colors. She uses color as shorthand for emotions - her grandmother might have a vermilion expression on her face, or she might be feeling very orange while staring at her mother's coffin at the funeral. Between colors-as-feelings and her insomnia-induced hallucinations (or magic - the book is deliberately, I think, noncommittal on whether some things only happen in her head or not) the entire book feels a little surrealistic. But grief and mourning DO feel surrealistic. The book is amazingly evocative and emotional and I absolutely adore it. This, along with City of Brass and Children of Blood and Bone, are definitely on my Best of 2018 list.

As an added bonus, the author is the American child of Taiwanese immigrants herself. So all the ghost traditions and folklore from Leigh's journey to Taiwan are from her ancestry as well.

This book was gorgeous. It may need a trigger warning for depression and suicide. If you can handle those themes, read it.

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how is this book an amalgamation of everything i wanted out of several other books but better