Review: Color Blind

Color Blind by Leigh Lennon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Since picking up my first Leigh Lennon book, I’ve found myself to be quite the fan. I powered through my first three Leigh Lennon books, when I got my hands on the next two I powered through them as well, and each individual book I have received since then has been devoured. I consistently enjoy Leigh Lennon’s work, but I will be honest and say I haven’t enjoyed my last two Leigh Lennon books quite as much as I enjoyed my prior Leigh Lennon books. This is not to say they were bad books, simply that my last couple of reads have not been my favourites.

In all honesty, I’m falling into a trap readers often fall into. Instead of comparing a book to every book I have read (somewhat difficult, I assure you, considering the number of books I read), I find myself comparing a book to other books by the author. It is a case of ‘I liked x by this author more than I liked y by this author’. Sure, we like to watch as an author develops across their career, but sometimes I fear we fall into a trap that has us frowning upon books we wouldn’t usually frown upon because it is not as good as something else written by the same author.

In this case, I find myself doing so in relation to the emotional element of this story. Leigh Lennon has ripped me apart in the past with her emotional storylines, and I had hoped the same would be true with Color Blind. Although there were emotional moments within this story, I found it was not to the degree I had expected it to be. In fact, I found the aspects of the story that were to be emotional rather predictable. It was not a bad story, it simply wasn’t what I had expected.

If I am being completely honest, I was unsure about this one for most of the first half of the book. It had potential but it was not hitting the marks I had been expecting. I think my issue with this one was the speech of the characters. I’m no stranger to crass words – in fact, I have one hell of a potty mouth and it probably explains why so few people wish to come back for a repeat conversation with me – but in the case of this story I felt as though it did not fit. I felt as though characters were crass for the ask of being crass, as a way to make the story seem different, and it pulled the reader out of the story rather than sucking us in. I know some people are like this – as I said, I’m such an individual myself – yet it did not fit with the storyline.

The second half of the book I enjoyed much more. Things came together really well, and although I worked out all of the secrets, I enjoyed watching the way everything came together. The second half certainly seemed to come together much better than the first half, pulling things together really well and pulling at some of those emotions Leigh Lennon is so good at evoking.

I’m certainly interested in reading the next book in the Fans of Football series (even if I am a bit tentative about some of the elements that are going to come into play), as I feel as though there has been a lot of potential opened up for this series.

While Color Blind is not my favourite Leigh Lennon read, I can certainly see a lot of readers really enjoying this one.

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