I am a big fan of this author's YA books: Broken and Watched. And I am also very intrigued by the whole synesthesia thing. I even have a really good friend who has the condition. I remember first reading about synesthesia when I was in college. Studying to be a science teacher, I had a subscription to Discover magazine, which I would read cover to cover. That story on people who always thought of certain numbers having a specific color, or sometimes words had a taste to them, that story stuck with me. This story was a really good one that used a few different types of synesthesia symptoms for characters in a family, since it is considered to be genetic. I feel like this author with her medical background is able to be very realistic about things like this disorder, the same as she was with the genetic heart defect in Broken. But we also had at the heart of this story a very good mystery. To me, this book is right up there with many adult mystery titles that have a medical aspect to them. It reminds me in a way of the good old fashioned Robin Cook novels. Less complicated and conspiracy theory-ish, but definitely as good of a mystery with things you know are coming, but don't always see completely until the bad guys begin giving their plots away. I guess that makes sense since the author does write those same books for adults. In this case I guess my point is that she does this well within the YA genre as well.

Now I had a few questions about how it all wrapped up, and if there was more faking going on than just identities. And maybe those things were actually touched upon, but I was at the exciting action point of the book and probably reading faster to get to find out how we could keep both Ella and her friends and family safe. Other questions I pondered when I had to put the book down to go back to work included wondering if schools have synesthesia as something they might use to put a student on an IEP, or Individualized Education Plan, so that they could get help from the special education teachers. Because it seems to me that it could cause some learning environments to not be the best suited in some cases. At some point I mean to reach out to those types of teachers in my school just to find out for myself about this very topic.

Highly recommended book, one I will be ordering for my school library with future budget money.

This review originally posted on my blog, Lisa Loves Literature.