Book Review ~ The Color of Lies

Get Smitten For Fiction! 😸

Hey book lovers! I’m here to share a review of an audio book I finished recently, The Color of Lies by C. J. Lyons.

About The Book 📚

Narrated by: Emily Sutton-Smith

Publication Date: November 2018

Publisher: Zondervan Audio

Genre: YA Contemporary, Mystery, Thriller, Realistic Fiction, Family

Goodreads Link

My Review

› Ella Cleary is a high school student in rural Pennsylvania with a rare condition called synesthesia (a real medical condition where one sense comes through with another). For Ella, she can see the colors of people’s emotions. Gram Helen, Ella’s grandmother, can see sounds. Ella’s uncle Joe can taste words. She’s expected to take over the family business after graduation but is struggling to find the courage to tell Gram Helen and uncle Joe that she wants to study art. Ella could always see the colors of everyone’s emotions until she met Alec.

› Alec is a young, good-looking black journalist from South Carolina who’s found Ella because he wants to find out what really happened to her parents. Helen and Joe told Ella her parents died in a fire, but Alec reveals their deaths were no accident. Shocked that her family lied to her, she teams up with Alec to try and find the truth.

“The world is filled with magic. You just have to look and listen”

› Audio Book/Writing Style
• The narrator does different voices for each character.
• The voice done for Alec is a little annoying.
• Accents changed and there are over-pronounced words.

› Likes 😻
• Synesthesia is a very interesting medical condition and made for a unique character trait.
• Predictable, yet satisfying ending. Sometimes it’s a satisfying feeling to know what’s going to happen. Like when you’re in the line for a roller coaster, you can see the entire thing, you know how it’s going to end, but you’re still excited and enjoy the ride.
• Ella’s friends Max and Rory are great side characters. I would have loved to get to know them better.

› Dislikes 😾
• The romance was completely unnecessary and there’s insta-love.
• Repetition of particular facts, especially the synesthesia.
• The first person narrative isn’t well-done and I normally like dual-perspective but it just didn’t feel right in Color of Lies and I’m not really sure why.
• It took me a while to figure out that this story takes place over just three days because it felt much longer than that, which makes me think either the pacing is off, or the passage of time wasn’t shown well in the writing (or I just plain wasn’t paying attention).

› Final Thoughts
• The Color of Lies is contemporary with a dash of mystery and sprinkle of a thriller. It was just okay for me, however, I’m interested in trying another C. J. Lyons book. I’m thinking maybe Snake Skin (Lucy Guardino FBI Thriller #1) or A Raging Dawn. Have you read either? Which one should I try?

About The Author

https://www.goodreads.com/photo/author/1993037.C_J_Lyons

“New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of over forty novels, former pediatric ER doctor CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about in her cutting edge Thrillers with Heart.

Two times winner of the International Thriller Writers coveted Thriller Award, CJ has been called a “master within the genre” (Pittsburgh Magazine) and her work has been praised as “breathtakingly fast-paced” and “riveting” (Publishers Weekly) with “characters with beating hearts and three dimensions” (Newsday).”

www.CJLyons.net