Customer Reviews

Mondays Are Red

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Luke awakens from a near fatal bout with meningitis to find that his senses are profoundly altered. Mondays are red to him, music has smells, and he sees wasps in his sister's hair. It's a condition called synesthesia, thoroughly explained at the end.

Luke is also followed in his mind by the character Dreeg, an evil force that wants him to do things he finds very hard to resist in his weakened state. Dreeg wants him to play increasingly dangerous tricks on his sister Laura, but Luke fights against it. He also begins to see the ethereal Seraphina, who is like a good witch and who appears when he is at his lowest point. Suddenly, he is able to sense that Laura is in real danger and that no else can help her except him.

Nicola Morgan's first novel is an intricate psychological suspense story. Readers will be drawn into the sensory world Luke lives in through powerful language and imagery. They will be drawn in so thoroughly that it is at times difficult to determine who other characters are, real or imagined, and what is actually happening.

Definitely a mind trip, MONDAYS ARE RED is a great book for discussion.

--- Reviewed by Amy Alessio

The Book I am doing a review on is, "Mondays Are Red", by Nicola Morgan. This is a story about a fourteen-year-old boy named Luke. Luke wakes up in the hospital with Synthesia (shifting of the senses). He finds out that he almost died from Meningitis. With Synthesia Luke now experiences a world he's never known. When he thinks of days of the weeks, he associates them with color, music with taste, feelings have smells and words have texture. The setting for the book takes place in modern day California. This book follows Luke as he realizes he has power and is faced with a decision to change the world. I absolutely loved this book, and highly recommend it. The author has a gift for bringing out the emotion of his characters.

Morgan combines elements of horror and poetry in this tale of one boy's strange experience with synesthesia. After waking up in a hospital and learning that he has suffered a bout of meningitis, Luke Patterson quickly discovers that his life has taken a dramatic and confusing turn. With the help of a newfound imaginary friend named Dreeg whose form changes depending on Luke's feelings toward him, Luke learns that all of his senses are strangely blended. ("The fact that I tasted cinnamon when I looked at her and that every now and then butterflies flittered from her eyes was something I had come to expect by now from my muddled senses.") With this new realization comes the power to change situations by thinking about them, and with that power, a new sense of freedom. Luke now adds a new talent to his long-time passion for running and athletics training-the talent to write astonishingly beautiful and eerie poems and stories. Luke learns the dangers of his new powers just in time to prevent catastrophe in this hallucinogenic tale that is sure to please lovers of language and ignite new ways of thinking about ordinary sensations.