“Color The Sky With Song is a strange little book that is sure to hit the marks for “cozy, spooky Fall vibes”.”

Review by Rayleigh Setser

Lucy wants out of Nether, the remote town where she’s trapped.

With her unloving parents treating her like a disease, 14-year-old Lucy works long hours in a terrible magnet factory. To make matters worse, she feels all alone as the only young person in town.

But one day, Lucy escapes across the mountains and learns that two mysterious figures control the outside world. Determined to learn more, she and a friend embark on a dangerous journey to find them.

Lucy soon realizes she’s smack in the middle of a cosmic clash between good and evil, uncovering a mind-blowing truth that changes everything she believes. And as she deals with these revelations, Lucy must confront the scariest reality of the biggest secrets aren’t the ones others have hidden from her, but the ones she’s hidden from herself.

"Change often comes from those the world least expects."

Color The Sky With Song is a strange little book that is sure to hit the marks for "cozy, spooky Fall vibes". It's a difficult book to describe, and I had to look up what genre it's placed in on retailer sites to get a better grasp of the concept, however "coming of age fantasy" is pretty vague, so here are some comps that it made me think of:

The descriptions of Nether brought to mind Tim Burton-type illustrations, so the book definitely played in my head looking like The Nightmare Before Christmas or Netflix's original movie Klaus. I also got some Lost Boy & Wendy vibes from Peter Pan and the main character, Lucy, reminded me a LOT of Alice from Alice in Wonderland. As I said, it's a strange little book, but I love strange little books, so this one was fun and definitely kicks off the spooky season well.

My main reason for rating 4 instead of 5 stars, is because I didn't understand the whole Matilda dynamic. I don't want to spoil it, so I'm going to leave it at that, but on one hand it felt like maybe a religious parallel or analogy, and then on the other hand, it was almost too weird to be a religious analogy. But, this honestly fits the strange vibes, so I'm not sure what to think about that.

Overall, this is the kind of book that I would love to read with a book club, just because there is so much to unpack and the conversations it would spark would be top-tier!

"Nothing is truly safe. But if you never take a risk, you stay stuck."

Content Ratings:

2. Very mild action (mentions common injuries, like broken bones, without gruesome details)

0. None.

0. None.

Other Trigger/Content Notices:

Content disclaimers: There’s no cursing or romance. The action / gore is more along the lines of creepy spooks, but there is a scene where a character is punished in an electric chair and there are heavy themes of sl@very to the dark lord and child @buse. There’s nothing in this book that you wouldn’t see in one of Tim Burton’s movies, but if you’re not expecting it, it may feel like a lot.

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