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The Color Of Light (2013)

by Helen Maryles Shankman(Favorite Author)

3.77 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1490473246 (ISBN13: 9781490473246)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Stony Creek Press

review 1: What a wonderful book. The Color of Light is a powerful and moving story which gracefully sweeps across continents and decades. While the setting and characters are truly unique, the age old question of what is truly evil and the power of all consuming love are the central themes.The storyline and characters hooked me in immediately. I found I put off doing many other things to sit and join the story where I had last left it off. The vivid portraits of many years and locations I had lived in were spot on and only added to the authenticity ironically of what is a story of magical realism. If I finish a book and find I still think of the characters and wonder what is next to be then the book is moving and more than worth the precious time it took to read. Well, I am wri... moreting this review literally months later and many other books later and few if any have had that lingering effect. I eagerly await for the next piece of fiction from Helen Shankman. I want to be consumed in a powerful story yet again.
review 2: I tried to finish this book. I really tried but when it became an exercise in hoping it would finally end with each page turn, and it did not, I gave up. One of the reasons I kept going is that the writing is very well done, and I did not come across any typos in this Kindle version. Below is why I could not continue...I grew up in the household of an artist that was classically taught as the students in this story were. She had the endless drawing classes, the dissection (in her case it was Cadaver Class), etc. She regaled us with tales of the terrible teachers (those who had nothing to impart to their students such as April) that had to be hired, and the school politics that spilled down to the students despite the best efforts of the "Board" never to let the students know what was going on.I posed for my mother, I learned to draw, and I admit I became fascinated by my own skeletal structure beneath my skin. I recall drawing a cat I had by continuously feeling it as it "posed" for me. Best cat I ever drew!I also went to every art show, art contest, and sometimes even meetings of artists Boards that she was on. I learned how to properly pack ceramics and canvases. I learned how to identify styles of paintings. I was a little know-it-all critic towards other artists at these shows, and those that knew me generally did not like me.You would think with this background I would readily identify with the students, but I didn't. I never was enamoured of the artist's life, and when I was finally on my own, I did not pursue the life of a painter or a pen-and-ink drawer. I could have but there was no way I wanted to go through the education my mother had. To read it in this book, to witness the struggles, the politics, the endless parties, and so on, was painful in the boring sense to me. What disheartens me about my own bored disinterest is that Raphael Sinclair is a very unique sort of vampire with an equally unique story. Unfortunately, there was so much detail about Tessa's time as a student that by the time the author dealt with Raphael and Sophia's story, I was done with this book. I wanted to read something else.If anything of value to pass onto other would be readers is that Tessa's story as a student of an art academy, that of her friends, and her family, take precedent. The fact that there is a love story between Tessa and Raphael really only gets hinted at until the end of Part I of the book. That's a helluva lot of so-called backstory. I wanted more of the romance between these two intriguing characters (and yes, Tessa is interesting, too) but there would be a taste, and then back to classes, and politics, and the scenes of bullying and humiliation.It just felt endless, and it never seemed to end.I am disappointed in myself for giving up on what could have been a story of worth but the author, in my opinion, dealt more with the students, classes, the politics, the bullying in that world, than was to my taste. less

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