The Colour of Trouble

by Gerry Bobsien

[Joséphine]

I had half the mind to chuck this book after the first 100 pages or so but wanting to know what the final outcome would be got the better of me. It was painstakingly difficult though not to skip past all the pages. As much as the beginning drew me in, I wanted to increasingly withdrew from reading with every passing chapter. It didn't help that every chapter started off with exam-type questions and statements with the allotted marks in brackets, which had rather ambiguous links to the chapters themselves. Rarely did I find these answered by any of the events that followed in the chapters.

The only parts that I did enjoy about this book were the thoughts they provoked about what art is, whether graffiti can be set apart from vandalism if the artistic intent is merited, or to what degree an original art piece can be appropriated in a new one without it constituting fraud. These thoughts though were considerably unrelated to the plot since they could be worked out independently from the plot.

Perhaps The Colour Of Trouble is much better suited for younger teens, or maybe even pre-teens. There are good lessons in there and like I said, it is a good springboard for independent thoughts, especially for those who are in an emerging age group such as pre-teens and younger teens.

Still, the dialogue was stilted. The characters were a little too flat for my liking. Various parts were somewhat disjointed. The relationships between the characters came across as rather superficial too. I barely understood what was up with Darcy and Maddy. It was even worse when Max came into the picture. Max's entry made little sense in the grand scheme of Maddy's exploits in the story.

What did have a fair bit of potential was Maddy's synesthesia. More specifically, Maddy had chromasthesia but that term wasn't introduced. Instead, there was a mention of how sounds would make her see colours that corresponded for her. Sadly, as much as it was occasionally mentioned, it wasn't explored all that much. This could have been the hook of what would set this book apart from others but instead it mostly became just background information about who Maddy was.

This review is also available on dudettereads.com.