** spoiler alert ** At first, I thought it was a story using a literary device that turns a disability into something magical as a way of writing about it. From that perspective, it was okay - the idea of seeing color in numbers and letters, of seeing sound, is cool. But it felt a bit inconsistent. Then the literary device idea disappears and I discover that synesthesia is a real thing - and one of the coolest "disorders" I've ever heard about and I am disappointed that I don't have have it. I can see that now it would be a bit distracting, but to have grown up with it...wow. I have to admit that I would have been among the group who asked about the color of their name (and would have been disappointed if it were anything uncool), and probably would have pestered her about lots of other things - the color of a song, or the shape of the door slamming. I wonder if people like Chagall saw color this way - how else could he have created that blue?

It was also a book about loss, sadness and learning to incorporate those things into yourself. I liked that everyone's loss was their own, that no one thought that the despair over losing a cat was silly. Because it isn't.