Cover Image: The Taste of Blue Light

The Taste of Blue Light

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Member Reviews

This was a touching and fairly powerful portrayal of mental illness. It started strong and the first half was definitely the better half -- but it still managed to ring true, and I loved the setting.

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Everywhere around the world, all born under the same sky, alarms ring in hearts and people bleed.


The Taste of Blue Light is a story about a girl called Lux who attends a boarding school for artists. She loves to write and party too hard, and take recreational drugs. Lux lives the kind of life a lot of teenage artists dream of. She's been looking forward to her final year before she gets to go out into the real world but a little sad to leave everything she knows behind. She loves her life.. until she wakes up in the hospital with no recollection of what happened. Her memories are erased. What's left is a Lux who is empty and lost, who gets migraines, her sight and dreams are sometimes filled with red, and she has no idea why or how her life took such a huge turn.

My mother used to say my problem is that I can’t decide whether I’m whiskey or chamomile. It’s actually more like I don’t know whether I’m the lamb or the slaughter.
This story was so beautifully written, if a little pretentious. But I really did love the writing and reading Lux's story so much. It was sad, damn right heartbreaking but it was also filled with love and understanding as well as, in my opinion, a very good representation of PTSD.
Lux when we first meet her is fun loving, running a muck at a boarding school while her parents live in Singapore. She's lighting backyard fireworks, experiencing sex for the first time and feeling melancholy that she only has one more year left of all of this.
But then she wakes up and red is where her memories should be. She remembers that she went out one night but nothing else. She thinks she's partied too hard, taken too many drugs, but this nagging feeling keeps nipping at her mind that something happened, something awful and now all she feels is lost.
Lux sees all sorts of professionals to try and remember, her parents are back living with her before she starts school again but all they do is fight and Lux convinces them to let her go back to school because she'll find old Lux in the halls, she'll be fixed. Life is never that easy though.

She turns to pick up her bag and then turns back to me, holding out an origami bird.
"It's a swan,' she says. "Serene on the surface but paddling like hell under water. Like you."
"What?"
"Takes one to know one."
Her friends Mei and Olivia are so understanding and supportive of her, weathering the storm of nightmares and the ghost of their friend, and they're not the only ones.
She makes another friend in Georgia and her school therapist Dr Baystone is patient and not at all pushy of her recovery. Allowing Lux to rediscover what happened mostly on her own.
She also meets Cal, the new kid and they quickly fall for each other and start a relationship. Cal is kind and sensitive and without being the 'guy who saves the girl' he walks along side Lux in her recovery without trying to 'fix' her which is a breath of fresh air from the same old trope I have seen too many damn times in books that battle any kind of mental illness.

It hurts. The way only the truth can: completely.
When it's revealed what happened to Lux I was genuinely surprised, it wasn't something I was expecting. This book already was dealing with the sensitive subject of PTSD and then addiing more to that could have easily been too much for the the author to handle but Ruffles handled both sensitive subjects very well in my eyes.
After the reveal the recovery process isn't rushed. Lux doesn't find her memories and then goes straight back to normal Lux, the recovery is a long process before and after the memories come back.
Lux isn't fixed by the end either its very clear at the end of the book that she still has a long way to go and I really loved that it wasn't all tied up neatly in a bow at the end.
That's not what happens with trauma, even when you think you're better and healed, even when you think you've dealt with all the feelings and have locked it up in a cupboard to never have to deal with again. Trauma slips under the door, it hides in place you never knew it affected, it affects how you talk, behave, the way you are with others. It's always there, it changes you. No matter how hard you try to go back to the old you, you never really get there and I think in a lot of ways that's a good thing.

The writing is so beautiful and has such keen commentary on the world we have found ourselves in recently that I thought I would include a few of my favorites.
I'm not sad. That's too mall. A tiny word.
'And see if you can find something else to wear - you look like you're going to a funeral. Shit,
sorry, Lux."
"That's OK. I didn't have a funeral."
(view spoiler)
I know it will hurt when I miss him, but I choose not contaminating him.
Jack is a human grenade with a propensity for pulling out his own pin.

If you're looking for a book that tackles tough subjects well, or just want to read a beautifully written contemporary novel then I highly recommend giving this book a go!

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I was strapped on an emotional roller coaster that didn't stop till the words were nothing but a full stop, halting me. That is what the book was like. I feel so drained and not quite complete. I want to start this review by saying it was a long draining book and I feel like I was lost in the motion for the first few chapters and in the next few I found my pace. The plot was quiet like We Were Liars by E.Lockhart, if you haven't read that book yet then I suggest you go check that book out.
So we follow a girl who has been through some hefty trauma and her brain is like a computer who is denying her entry and from there we unfold how her friends and family deal with it then to goes on to speak about her recovery. Now I want to point out that the sentence you just read is NOT a spoiler because most book have a resolution or a slither of hope that in the end it will get better and that was the novel's lesson to the readers.

I found the plot a bit jumpy and the character at times annoying but overall I enjoyed the book because it was set in the world of today with a problem that may occur or has occurred to people and I find that this hit's closer to home because it's almost scary how real it could be. I recommend this book for 16+ because you deal with heavy issues and it was a long bumpy ride. The ending was quite calm and it was like a semicolon, where it was finished but you as a reader created some sort of end for the character.
4.5/5

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*THIS REVIEW WILL BE LIVE ON MY BLOG WEAVINGLIFE.WORDPRESS.COM ON THE 15th*

Taste of blue light is a coming of age novel that follows our main character Lux, went to a party one night, then wakes up days later with no recollection of what made her pass out. 

I personally really enjoyed taste of blue light for it's simplistic writing but realistic characters. No one character was perfect, and they  all had their little issues, much like we do in real life and I found myself relating to them in different aspects because they felt so human. My favourite characters had to be Cal and Mei as they both felt like the kind of people who would make amazing friends and be there for you no matter what. 

My favourite part of this novel, was the positive representation of counselling, mental disorders, and recovery. All were painted well, the main character coming to see how far she has come because of her counselling, her friends and school mates understanding that she wasn't okay, and that's okay. and finally, the full circle that we feel we come to when we finish this book. 

Alot of the time, I have the issue where a book will end and I'll be sitting there like 'well what happened to then in a few years?' but this book leaves you with no questions like that as it actually has a piece that is set later in time and shows the immense recovery the main character has made from her traumas. 

Overall I'm giving this 3.75, most of this is for the plot, characters and the positive light on counselling (we really can never get enough of this) I believe someone dealing with PTSD or different mental issues than me, might connect to this book alot more but for me since I didn't connect with it, I feel like it's a little forgettable.

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