It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t like you.

I want to be really clear up front lest I scare people off this book who might otherwise really enjoy it: I didn’t really enjoy this book (although I didn’t dislike it, either), but it’s entirely a case of wrong book, wrong reader, not that the book is poorly written or objectionable in any way.  I can definitely see why people would love it, but I think several factors combined together with my personal tastes meant I never really connected with it emotionally.

I’m especially upset by not loving this book because it was a gift from my book twin, Malin, in our first CBR holiday book exchange in 2014. I suppose we must disagree about books every once in a while :)

Ultraviolet follows Alison, a sixteen year old girl who is currently in a mental institute for teenagers following a psychotic break. When the story picks up, Alison has been institutionalized for several weeks, but is only now coming back to herself. She doesn’t remember much from before the incident, but it seems she was the last person to see Tori Beaugrand before she disappeared, a popular and beautiful schoolmate with whom she’s always had an adversarial relationship. Tori disappeared the same night that Alison had her breakdown, and it’s clear many people think that even if Alison didn’t murder her, she at least knows something about what happened. There was the blood, after all, and even if there’s no body or other evidence yet, the fact that her breakdown started with her confessing to Tori’s murder is, you know. Suspicious.

And then her memories start coming back, and things start making even less sense than before. Did she murder Tori? Is she crazy? And what does it all have to do with her over-active and strange senses?

Well, spoilers (sort of), she’s not crazy, she has synesthesia. And that synesthesia is very, very strong. Much stronger than the condition most synesthetes experience, including myself. Yup, I have it, too, and I’m not going to lie and say that didn’t affect the way I read this book. It’s not that I think the portrayal of the condition was inaccurate, necessarily, but I’m pretty sure the author isn’t a synesthete herself, and was working from research. This is one of the factors that definitely affected me, which isn’t the book’s fault. I was constantly being pulled out of the story whenever her synesthesia was mentioned, because I was interrogating it in relation to mine instead of letting myself get immersed in the story. It didn’t help that none of Alison’s colors for things matched mine. I was like NO FIVE IS NOT YELLOW IT’S RED WHAT IS EVEN UP WITH YOU.

It also bothered me that Alison’s synesthesia affected her relationship with her mother. It felt like an overreaction that her mother would respond to such seemingly harmless warning signs in Alison’s childhood, and even when you find out at the end that SPOILERS Alison’s grandmother had synesthesia and was also schizophrenic, so Alison’s mother linked the two and kept herself at a distance from Alison, fearing that the same thing would happen to her, it still didn’t ring true to me. It made me hate Alison’s mother. And maybe this is just because my synesthesia is MUCH milder than Alison’s, but it also bothered me that she would think herself crazy. I mean, sure it’s wacky that hearing things clink causes her to see sparkles in the air, and since this is sci-fi, she can taste people lying, but man. As far as I know about the condition, most synesthetes just assume the way they experience the world is normal. Hell, I didn’t even realize I had it until I was in my twenties, and I regularly forget about it, because I’ve never experienced any other kind of senses, and as humans, we just don’t talk about the way we sense things. At one point, Alison also wishes she could trade in her “colors” if it means getting out of the institution, and this also bothered me, because that didn’t seem like a common reaction either. It would be like a non-synesthete offering to give up their sense of taste, or the ability to see colors, period END SPOILERS.

Anyway, rant over, the synesthesia is only the way in to the rest of the plot. It slowly unfolds as Alison becomes more determined to figure out what happened to Tori and prove to the doctors she isn’t crazy, and as she learns about her condition from a South African doctor who has been visiting her as part of a scientific study on synesthesia.

SPOILERS All of a sudden at the end of the book, everything turns, and it felt really sudden to me. The doctor isn’t a doctor! He’s a fraud! No, he’s an alien! He’s stranded on Earth! And only Alison can find the device he needs to get home! And all of a sudden they’re in love with each other! Seriously, this might have bothered me the most. I’m not often squicked out by age differences or strange romances, but it felt like it came out of nowhere for them to love each other, and he was so much older than she was. Tori turns out to be alive, and also an alien. It was like, the first half of the book was very realistic and serious, and then all of a sudden I’m being asked to believe in this world all this crazy stuff can happen, and I felt like I was being asked to take a journey that I hadn’t been properly prepared for END SPOILERS.

Which brings me to the final thing that really hindered my enjoyment, and which is probably the real reason I never connected to the book: the author’s style. Alison as a narrator was so freaking serious and humorless, all the time. I know she was having some serious things happen to her, but, man, lighten up. Crack a joke every now and then. Get some whimsy in your life. I knew we weren’t really going to mesh when it was revealed that she was a poet. She certainly narrated like one. Poet language for the most part is not something I deal with well. I don’t like how overly serious everything is, and how every image on the page is meant to be considered and thought beautiful. A lot of Alison’s experience with her synesthesia was through this poet tone, which might be another reason it didn’t work for me. And tone is a HUGE part of my enjoyment of a book. It’s like listening to music. You don’t need to know why you don’t like a song to know you just don’t. Reading this book was like being asked to listen to an album by a musical artist that I just don’t get.

I didn’t mean to write a novel about this book, but it bothered me that I didn’t like it, so I guess I just word vomited up this review reflexively. Seriously, if this premise sounds interesting to you, you should check it out and not let my overly long reaction to it prevent you from doing so. I seem to be the outlier here. (Although, I am curious enough to read the sequel, which SPOILER is from Tori’s perspective. As she was the best part of the book when she showed up, I am cautiously optimistic for it.)

Points if you know what my review title is referencing without googling.