Fire Colour One by Jenny Valentine

Quite some time ago I was sent Fire Colour One for review. I have been close to picking this up so many times in shop just for how interesting the cover looks. To be completely honest, I’m so glad I didn’t waste my money on it.

Title: Fire Colour One

Author: Jenny Valentine

Genre: YA, Contemporary, Love

Publisher: Harper Collins Children’s Books

Publication Date: 2nd July 2015

Pages: 256

Summery : Iris’s father, Ernest, is at the end of his life and she hasn’t even met him. Her best friend, Thurston, is somewhere on the other side of the world. Everything she thought she knew is up in flames.

Now her mother has declared war and means to get her hands on Ernest’s priceless art collection. But Ernest has other ideas. There are things he wants Iris to know after he’s gone. And the truth has more than one way of coming to light.

Fire Colour one is the story of Iris, a teenager who has a passion for art and bonfires. Her mother is bad at her role and the father she hasn’t seen in years is dying. When her mother takes Iris to stay with her father in his last few weeks, Iris tries to uncover all the information she can about her parent’s failed relationship and about just why her father is a millionaire.

I was so excited to start this book and I must admit that I plodded through it for a good three months. Very close to the end I gave up for quite some time as I just couldn’t face going to the emotionless story. I’m not sure if it was the constant mention of art or the un-relatable characters, but I struggled to find any enjoyment in reading it.

The thing that frustrated me most about this book was the extreme build up to a pretty average ending for a young adult novel. There was an excessive amount of explain about her relationships with her parents and about her life before meeting her father. There was a lot of chat about unimportant things and it left you wondering where the hell the story was going. Only in the last few pages it got interesting and everything seemed to make sense. I’m not sure if that was just me, but it wasn’t very interesting to follow and the ending seemed rushed.

I also found it very difficult to relate to the characters. Iris and her parents, Hannah and Ernest were the main characters in the story. All the other characters seemed to pop up ever few chapters for a line just to remind you there were actually other people in the world. It seemed like Valentine had to add other characters to the story but wasn’t too sure how to do that. I connected with none of them and if you don’t connect with a character you’re just not interested!

There were some absolutely stunning and beautiful parts to this story (and the occasional quote which made it in to my book quote journal!) however they did very little to soften the blow of ‘just another YA novel.’

I’m going to take a break from YA reading I think because the last few books I’ve read I’ve not enjoyed that much. I don’t want to end up completely hating the genre! Fire Colour One was just very disappointing and not what i expected! The last line of the novel was probably the best thing about it for me.