I love this original book. So you wake up confused and know you were on a date last night. However when you look in the mirror you aren’t you.....read on to see why, what happens and how this can be. I gave this 4/5 on goodreads.

A witness who obsessively watches the victims house, paints all that goes on with detailed notes including times and was there when the murder happened. It should be a detective's dream especially as Jasper is really keen to help the police. But 13 year old Jasper has Autism and his synesthesia and face blindness mean no-one is listening. Told in the first person, this can be a little challenging as Jasper tells his story in the colours of the sounds he hears. It's a fascinating concept for a whodunnit and even if it isn't 100% true to the life experience I felt I was getting something of an insight.

Life in the neighbourhood is thoroughly disrupted when the bohemian Bee Larkham moves in. What happens next unfolds in the words of Jasper Wishart whose face blindness means he relies on voices and clothing to recognise people. Further complication is provided by his synesthesia which means he experiences sounds in vivid colour and paints, not what he sees, but what he hears.

Page turner!

I found the constant reference to colour too intrusive to finish the book but, while it’s not as good as Curious Incident to which it’s been likened, I’m sure it will be enjoyed by some of our readers.

I stayed up until 2.30 finishing this book as I had to find out the ending. Life is difficult to navigate when you can identify people by their faces but if you’re like Jasper and can only identify people from the colour their voices make life is a minefield. Then add the fact that you know a murder has happened yet no one will listen to you. The thought of how Sarah Harris plotted and researched this makes my head hurt just thinking about it. So cleverly thought out. This deserves all the plaudits it gets a great start to 2019

This is a most unusual murder mystery. The reader is initially even left unsure whether there has been a victim as everything is seen through the eyes of a young autistic teenager who has no ability to manage facial recognition but who hears everything in colour. He is unable to identify his own father except by the "colour " of his voice. The portrayal of the boy's "disability" is compelling and the writer kept the suspense to the end. Have recommended this to book groups as it provides plenty of talking points

Jasper has synaesthesia and therefore sees the world in a unique way. He can’t recognise faces but distinguishes people by the colour of their voices. This makes him a unique protagonist in this new take on a whodunnit.

I enjoyed this book from the outset and was convinced I had it sussed but was surprised more than once. The book kept me engaged all the way through and was refreshingly different to anything I have read before.

Alongside the murder mystery the book manages to explore the complexities of relationships for those with learning difficulties and the people around them.

I will look out for more of this authors work in the future.

Thanks @netgalley for the arc of this book!

This is an interesting mishmash of autistic boy/synaesthesia/murder mystery genres. I can see that some readers might find Jasper's character too frustrating (there's an awful lot about the parakeets!) but I though the portrayal was good, though he occasionally seemed a bit younger than he was supposed to be. The synaesthesia aspect was very interesting, and it was also interesting to think about what it must be like to have face blindness (or live with someone who does).
I liked the murder mystery side of things, and I was kept guessing on what happened so that's always a plus point for me.
On the downside, I found the conclusion ran too slowly for my liking. I understood why Jasper was only slowly piecing together the evidence, but it just dragged on too long. I also found the time shifts very confusing. I felt like I needed a little calendar in front of me to figure out which bit of time I was reading about now - this did add to the confusing feel of the murder, but I would have preferred a more linear approach, or at least a clearer delineation of what was happening when without the need to try and remember days.
Overall though I enjoyed reading this.

Our protagonist, Jasper, is the ultimate in unreliable narrators. Jasper doesn’t engage with the world in the way that others do. For a start, he has face blindness – prosopagnosia, which means that he is unable to recognise faces, even those he sees every day, like his dad’s, so he has to rely on familiar clothing or pieces of jewellery to recognise people.

Jasper also has synesthesia, a condition in which one sense is simultaneously perceived as if by one or more additional senses. Jasper’s form of synesthesia means that he perceives words, concepts and sounds with the sensory perception of colour. So, Jasper’s mum, now deceased, was for him a joyous cobalt blue. Thursday is apple green and Jasper’s dad has an ochre voice and always wears a blue shirt and blue jeans for him.

So Jasper lives in a world that is different to everyone else. He loves his colours and understands the world through them. They are what inspire him to tell his stories through his paintings. Like many people with autism, he is also quite literally minded and is a bit compulsive, obsessive with a tendency to repeat things and so it is sometimes difficult to tell the past from the present when he tells his story.

,It is undoubtedly the colours that make this story. Seeing the world through Jasper’s eyes is a visual delight. These are colours that light up the imagination and stimulate the senses as Jasper struggles to tell his story in a way that others will understand. His love of music is informed by the dancing, bright and sparkling colours that music produces for him and enhances his joy several fold.

Into Jasper’s world comes a newcomer to his street, Bee Larkham. Bee is a colourful character who loves birds, exotic clothes and loud music and is a breath of fresh air to Jasper’s suburban street.

When Bee moves in, she begins to feed the birds and that helps to attract the brightly flashing parakeets which captivate Jasper. He looks at them every day from his bedroom window, recording their movements alongside those of the people on his street. He does this in a series of notebooks which are a written accompaniment to the vivid paintings that he makes and which also document his daily life.

It is no wonder that Bee becomes a focus for Jasper; she is everything that Jasper loves – musical, loud, colourful. And she also loves his parakeets which is an immediate point of bonding. So when Bee Larkham disappears, it is no surprise that the police turn to Jasper to try and understand what happened.

But is Jasper’saccount reliable? And who really knew Bee Larkham? By all accounts she knewmore than one man in the street very well indeed.

Jasper’s obsessive compulsive tendency is mirrored by thestory and this can sometimes make progress in understanding quite slow, but thedelight in this book comes from understanding the way in which Jasper has beenmanipulated to understand a story that is different to the one that others willsee.

So if you are looking or thrills, chills and fast paced narration, this isn’t the book for you. But if you want to enter another world; to see life from a different perspective – even perhaps to feel a little jealous about the vivid colours that Jasper sees but we do not, than sit back and immerse yourself in Jasper’s kaleidoscopic, colourful and fractured world and understand a little better why people behave the way that they do.

Verdict: Impactful, fascinating and so well researched, this is a unique story with many facets.

The combination of synaesthesia and a murder is a terrific one and I found The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder engaging and very funny in parts. Sarah Harris’ boy hero Jasper has an obsession with parakeets and struggles to express himself except in colours and sounds which results in some hilarious descriptions - velvety dark chocolate lines to describe snoring (inspired!). For me the book was too long and I found it lost its impetus half way through. However I certainly found the ending tense and surprising. Thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC.

This tale follows the story of 13-year-old Jasper, an autistic boy who has face blindness and synaesthesia. He is convinced that someone has murdered Bee Larkham, but no one believes him.

I’ll start off by saying that this is a truly unique book. A combination of his autism, face blindness and synaesthesia creates a character like no other and a really interesting narrative. The way that Jasper describes the colour of people’s voices is really enjoyable to read. As a reader, you truly love Jasper. I created a bond with him extremely quickly and really felt his intense emotions during upsetting scenes.

The story is also incredibly intriguing. All the while you are kept o your toes and you never truly know what is going on until the very end. You can guess, of course, but you are never completely certain if you are right or not. I have to admit, there were times when the story was a little slow and dragged on a little bit for my liking, but it wasn’t something that I couldn’t get through. The way the ending was handled also wasn’t particularly my favourite and I think the climax should’ve been different, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this is a really, really good book. Definitely worth a read.

Thank You Netgalley & Publishers For Granting My Request To Review This Book.

The Synopsis For This Book Really Drew Me In, As I Knew I Had Never Read A Book Similar To This Before. Having Said That, I Struggled To Keep My Attention On The Story.

“The Colour Of Bee Larkharm’s Murder” Follows Jasper, A Young Boy Who Doesn’t Recognise Faces And Sees The Colours Of Words, Making Him Extremely Unique In His World. Jasper Soon Makes Friends With His Neighbour, Bee Larkharm And The Two Bond Over Their Shared Love Of The Parakeets That Nest In The Tree Between Both Their Home’s. After Various Run Ins With An Unapproving Neighbour, Something Happens To Bee, Leaving Jasper With A Mystery To Solve.

I Wanted To Love This Book But Only Really Enjoyed It From About The 60% Mark. That’s When I Felt The Mystery Side Of The Book Really Started To Come Out. From Then On, I Raced Through The Book To See If My Predictions For The Ending Were Right. I’m Sad To Say When The Colours For Peoples Voices etc Were Described, I Skipped Over Them As I Found They Broke Up The Story In A Way And That’s When My Attention Would Wane. Again, I’m Sad As That’s Was The Point Of The Book - I Just Connected With The Mustery Side More

It took me a little while to get into this book - due to the story being told from Jasper's perspective, there's a lot of synaesthetic descriptions which, at times, felt overwhelming, unnecessary and dragged the plot.. Jasper's POV isn't the easiest to flow with, which I get is kind of the point and certainly got me symphathising with him and his father, but it also meant I wasn't immediately sucked into the story.

About halfway through, though, I was absolutely hooked. There are so many layers to this story, with moral ambiguities and unexpected twists in every chapter - there are no simple characterisations, villains or heroes in this book, and by the end of it I felt emotionally wrung out (in a goody way). There are obviously comparisons to be made with Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, as well as Emma Healey's Elizabeth Is Missing, but they don't detract from the originality or voice of The Colour of Bee Larkham's Murder.

This is a sweet, stark, poignant story with moments of deft humour and humbling revelation.

This book will inevitably be compared to 'Curious Incident', but it is much more than a copycat. The factually correct description of a boy who hears sound as colour is a brilliant; as is the fact that he can't remember faces, even his own father's. The murder mystery (or is it) is beautifully disclosed throughout the book. Inventive, and cleverly written, this is a book people will talk about.

Fair warning: I didn't properly finish this novel, though I was well over halfway when I decided I couldn't manage to complete it so I skipped and skimmed to the end, to find out how things turned out - which suggests I was at least invested enough for that. It's not the story itself which I struggled to get to grips with, but the manner of its telling. I was drawn to the elements of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime' - the unreliable child narrator was a sympathetic character and the plot had potential to be original and intriguing. However, it was incredibly slow. I was 16% in (Kindle reader!) before I realised we were still on the same day the book started on. It's told in an epistolary style, like a log of daily thoughts and events, and there's only so much I could take of having the same event told and retold multiple times with different perspectives before I simply lost patience. Once I started skipping whole chapters, I would land at a new place to find the story had barely developed and I'd hardly missed anything at all by ploughing onwards with great gaps. There were some moving and eloquently-described moments or scenes, but ultimately, I found it too challenging and wanted to stop playing detective and just be told the outcome. It just felt like I was working too hard when the author needed to do a bit more of the heavy lifting!

Jasper is 13, face-blind and experiences synaesthesia - seeing colours for sounds/words/people. He's also witness to his neighbour's murder but can't explain what he saw to anyone - in a way they understand, at any rate. His father is struggling to look after him, the police are fed up with him ringing 999 and all Jasper cares about - murder aside - are the parakeets that flock to their street.

The first half of the novel is concerned with setting Jasper up as a character - how he thinks, records his day, and how the people around him react. It can feel a bit repetitive after a while, no matter how pretty the colours he describes. You also have a sense that Jasper (rather, the author) is holding something back from the reader and that can feel frustrating.

In the second half the action begins to step up as various plot points fall into place. We find out more about what Bee was really like and those who might seek to cause her harm. The more we know about Jasper the more you can see how the fateful night was for him.

I'm glad I read the story but I could've put it down quite easily early on.

I did not enjoy this book at all. The description sounded right for me a murder mystery and the story of an autistic boy which both were correct,. Jasper is a 13yr old boy who is autistic and suffers from synaestyesia and pronopagnosia as well and this is how he copes with life.
Jasper can not recognise faces but he sees the world in colour and sounds, however I found so much of this repetitive and it became tedious reading as it lost the flow for me. The ending did bring the story together and so gave closure.
I must admire the author Sarah Harris for her different approach on a difficult topic and the amount of research that is evident on reading this story as viewed by Jasper.

I always appreciate it when an author tries something different to set their novel apart in an immensely crowded marketplace, however, this didn't quite work out for me. It's inevitable that it will be compared to Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, one of the books that got me so heavily involved in reading as well as an all-time favourite of mine, but this isn't as compelling and readable as that. Here our main character, Jasper, a severely autistic teenager who also suffers from synaesthesia, strongly suspects his neighbour, Bee, has been murdered. However, the combination of face-blindness and synaesthesia make it difficult to glean information from him during police interviews. Synaesthesia is a neurological condition where the senses join or merge meaning that, in this case, Jasper's brain automatically assigns a colour to anything that may stimulate one or more of his senses.

I really like that the author has used this to weave an original yarn but, if I'm honest, there was a little too much focus on the condition that it at times disrupted the narrative flow and got quite tedious. I feel that the author has carried out a decent amount of research as everything was explained, but as I have no experience with the condition it's difficult to say whether her portrayal of synaesthesia was accurate or not. Kudos for raising awareness of these conditions, but at times it felt as though the balance between fact and fiction was a little off making it feel more like non-fiction and unfortunately one of those deflating times when the concept is sound but the execution poor.

Many thanks to The Borough Press for an ARC.

Original and interesting thriller.

Jasper is autistic, has synesthesia and face-blindness and is our narrator in this thriller about the death of one of the neighbours, Bee of the title. She is a flirtatious blonde who befriends Jasper but whose bad life decisions lead to her death.
Despite the repetitions of our autistic narrator, the plot moves along quite well (a bit slow for me in places) and characters are well- developed. It enjoyable and I learned a lot about Jasper’s individual perceptions.

This book is a journey! How you feel about the characters - especially Bee- is a complicated journey in itself. A fantastic story, brilliantly written, with beautiful characters.

I loved this! It was such a unique take on a murder mystery, with the narrative being told by a thirteen year old who has synthaesia, and doesn't recognise faces. There were loads of twists and reveals in almost every chapter, and I couldn't put it down.