As soon as I saw the tile of this book I knew immediately what it meant. As a synaesthete nearly everything in my vocabulary has a colour whether it be numbers, letters,or days of the week, to name but a few. I've read a couple of novels in which this condition takes center stage, Claire Morell's Astonishing Splashes of Colour being one. Neither that, or this book really describes the condition well, but admittedly, it is a difficult concept to describe to people, as I know only too well.

This particular novel is told from thirteen-year old Jasper's very colourful point of view. Jasper – I won't say “sufffer”, because in my experience I don't suffer at all, I embrace my synaesthesia – let's just say he also has face-blindness and, I suspect autism. So there's a whole lot going on here.

Jasper, convinced he is involved with the death of a neighbour, Bee Larkham, is accompanied to the local police station by his father, a single parent, who seems to be almost oblivious to his son's oddities. The police interviews are colourful but confusing, and this, I found to be the problem with this book – the overwhelming detail, almost minute by minute is just too much. I've no doubt the author researched these conditions, but the result, rather than being interesting and informative, if not entertaining, became intensely irritating and boring.

There will be obvious comparison's to Mark Haddon's Curious Incident of a Dog......, another book I'm afraid I couldn't get on with.

I do wonder if author has personal experience of the conditions she writes about; in this case I would be surprised if the answer was Yes.