The Astonishing Color of After

2.5 stars, quite mid, and quite slow.

This book is rich and full of emotion, equal measures sadness and joy. It's saturated in color, art, and magic with a poetic writing style. The characters are real; flawed but relatable. The story is both haunting and uplifting.

4.5* rounded up because it's sooo good

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

“Once you figure out what matters, you'll figure out how to be brave”

“Because the purpose of a memory, I would argue, is to remind us how to live”

This is one book that will tear your heart into shreds and rebuild it one piece at a time. To lose a parent at such a young age to suicide and have no answers as to why... I have no words. The way this author writes you don't just read what Leigh is feeling, you go through the pain, sadness and the healing process with her.

I know some reviewers have said why the romance with Axel. I think he was necessary in her healing, a steady rock for her to hold onto. He loved her mother and her mother loved him and knew he was good for Leigh. When Leigh came back home he was there waiting for her, ready to be there however she wanted. #theastonishingcolorofafter

The author's note at the end is a must read ...

“I grew up witnessing firsthand the effects of depression, and watching how my family let the stigma surrounding it become one of the darkest, stickiest traps. That stigma can and does kill. That stigma is perpetuated by not talking.” Emily X.R. Pan.

Audio was incredible - if you read this I think it's really great to be able to hear the narrator pronounce and speak Mandarin the way Leigh hears it and her family speaks it. Also, I feel like this is the rare YA book that doesn't feel very YA in the way it's written. Before I started, I read a review that said something to the effect of - make sure you're in a good headspace when you read this, because it deals heavily with depression and suicide. I absolutely agree with this assessment. It also deals with family secrets, and learning about one's own culture when not given the opportunity to learn about it organically, and grieving both. With a touch of magical realism that, surprisingly, I did not hate! (Mainly because it is treated as something that is very important in the way Leigh's mind is working, and her questioning her own sanity but not being able to stop seeking her mother's spirit.)

I loved the exploration of Taiwan and family for the parts of the book that were set there. I'm thankful that I had recently read The Ghost Bride, which gave me a better understanding of some of the traditions that were talked about in this book. The book jumps around in time a lot, and I came to appreciate that. I didn't need it to wrap up as tidily as it did, but I guess YA ... I still really, really liked it. I liked spending time with Leigh and her friends, especially Caro, and how art played such a big role in how they all interacted with each other. It was really different, and really beautiful.

This was a beautiful book. It really explores loss, depression, and relationships. Although it was not a 5 star book for me I would still recommend it to fans of YA.

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.

I'm pretty mixed on this book. The writing of this novel was absolutely stunning. Prose like this is either hit or miss with people but it was a hit with me and I really loved it. It talked about a heavy topic like suicide but wasn't graphic, which was good, but the discussion of depression itself was very surface. I didn't really understand the root of her mother's depression and it wasn't talked about very often. When it was, it really hit home, but if it had been explored a bit more, I think it could have been very impactful, especially from Leigh's perspective. I liked the surrealistic bits of this book at first, starting with the bird, but as it progressed it felt more like it was delving into fantasy and I couldn't tell what was really happening, which made the experience not so much interesting like it had been but just confusing. I think the real downfall of this book was the romance plotline. It felt completely disconnected from the main plotline and it felt almost like two different books. I didn't understand why it was there and the length of the book didn't give enough time for either plots to fully develop. If the romance had been saved for another book and the main family plot had been expanded on more, this probably would have been a 4 or even 5 star book. I didn't really connect with the main character, Leigh; she didn't have any traits, really, just hobbies and other people. I couldn't describe her actual personality to you at all. I found myself enjoying the romance portions of this book a bit more because of this, because it showed who she was at least a little bit more and they were more satisfying. The main reason I wanted to read this book, for the discussion of mental health I heard so much about, was lacking so much that I didn't really want to read those. Overall, I think this book had a lot of potential and some really good moments, but it had a few too many things going on and was underdeveloped.

This is beautiful my written book. I can't give it 5 stars because it made me so sad. I have been walking around in a cloud while reading it.

Overall, I found this story moving. If I'm being more honest, it kind of tore me apart.
That said, at times I found the structure repetitive, and some of the relationships felt shoehorned in at the last minute. For the most part I thought the characters were dynamic, and for the most part I felt the topics of mental illness and grief (and the especially difficult overlap of the two) were handled sensitively.

One of the greatest strengths of this story is its depiction of the stigma surrounding mental illness. Mental illness so deeply alters the experience of life, and yet those experiencing it are expected to pretend nothing is wrong. This shame extends outward, impacting both those living with mental illness and those living with those living with mental illness, like Leigh and her dad. Even when Leigh does talk more openly about her mother, all the while she is crushed under the pressure to keep explanations vague, to keep the ugliest bits hidden, not only from others but at times even herself.

Some books about mental illness seem to stall at the “this actually exists it is certainly real so stop trivializing it!” point. Not so with The Astonishing Color of After. It's more comprehensive. It speaks to not just the immense weight of the symptoms, but also the expectation that you pretend you are not even experiencing them. Even if they could end up killing you.

This might be odd, but I'd recommend this book to people who enjoyed A Monster Calls. Both books are about young people struggling to make sense of their mothers' illnesses. Both capture how you can simultaneously understand something so well and not at all. Both use imagery and metaphors to help work through some of the topics that are most challenging to talk about. Both straddle the line between what's “real” and what isn't, arguing that leaning into the abstract can help us make sense of the concrete.

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.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com