I will not be giving feedback on this book as I couldn’t really get into it but I think others may enjoy it.

This is a beautiful story of grief and loss, and how to go on following that. There are some difficult topics in this book but everything is dealt with wonderfully and respectfully.

However, the writing style can sometimes be too flowery and takes away from the core of the story a little.

This is a really beautifully told story about coping with loss and mental health and how that affects not only yourself but the people around you.

For so long during this book I was thinking "I just can't support this main character (Minnie)" but I realised once I had finished it and viewed her story as a whole that I completely understood her and her actions. She does some reckless, silly, unforgivable things and yet you can't help empathise with someone who is struggling through such a dufficult situation.

I never like to give spoilers when I review so I'm keeping things vague here but I do just want to say I love that the ending isn't perfectly wrapped up. It's the perfect mix of melancholy and hopefulness.

Really, really enjoyed this and cannot give anymore props to Harriet Reuter Hapgood.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for providing me with a copy for review.

I found this book absorbing. As someone with no artistic talent whatsoever it was a real chance to look through someone else's eyes and understand what they see when they're creating art in various different mediums. I am only sad that "The Rainbow Series" doesn't exist in reality to visit!

Whilst the book is about mental health, grief and loss, it is also about romance, hope and the strength of the relationship between the three sisters and their relationships with art and creativity.

Perhaps the thing I enjoyed most about this book was seeing a character where her Deafness was not the main focus of her character. Niko is one the main protagonist's two sisters and it is simply dropped into the description that she is Deaf and uses BSL. Yes, there is discussion of her communication difficulties and mention of her trying to find more BSL users but it is not the main aspect of her personality or the main focus of the book. It is so refreshing to have diverse characters normalised in this way! As someone who also has hearing loss and uses some basic BSL, all of the descriptions of sign language were also convincing and realistic.

Beautifully written coming of age story that tackles mental health & grief. It's a shame that the lyrical style gets in the way of pace & plot & overall it will be too ponderous for most readers... tho the arty teens may love it.

After really enjoying The Square Root of Summer, I was eager to dive back in to one of Harriet Reuter Hapgood's stories. How to Be Luminous delivers on the same gut-wrenching emotion, paired with a twist of magic realism, made all the more enjoyable because this is a book about creatives and creation, and the light and dark sides that are often present in people we would label creative geniuses.

I love how the central conceit of this book - Minnie's loss of her ability to see colour - is used so thoroughly to explore all the different, difficult and conflicting emotions that Minnie and her sisters are experiencing. They are in an impossible situation, and their reactions to it, and to each other, ring so true. This isn't a story of sisters banding together to overcome the difficulty of losing their mother - it's the story about how they're each falling apart in their own way, and how they take that out on each other. It's raw, occasionally brutal, and so utterly believable.

Lyrical, beautiful and cathartic, this is a story for anyone who has ever loved and lost, but particularly for the creatives out there who have struggled to overcome their own mental health challenges and return to their art - be that painting or writing or music or whatever. Like me, maybe you'll find great comfort in reading Minnie's story, knowing that there's someone who just 'gets it'.

I was sent a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

An emotional read about mental health, the power of self healing from the body and mind. It covers so many major issues, family, loss, grief, suicide as well as the major theme of mental health, a tough emotional read, but well worth it and I think people, especially YA should be encouraged to read this, would be great to see on the National curriculum in schools. Wonderful writing and an important message. A thought provoking and powerful read

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me access to this rather unusual exploration of mental health.
Our narrator, Minnie, is one of three daughters. Their mother, a celebrated artist, has gone missing. Since the day Minnie discovered a note in her mother’s studio she’s carried the burden of thinking her mother committed suicide...and she believes she’s lost colour.
We follow Minnie as she tries to learn to live with the absence of a parent, but also on a journey of self-discovery as she struggles to make sense of her own feelings.
A rather abstract exploration of mental health, but an intriguing one. Whether you like art or not doesn’t matter, you get drawn into Minnie’s way of seeing the world.

I think this book did an excellent job dealing with some very difficult topics in a sensitive manner. It covers grief, loss, suicide, mental illness and much more. The book is heavily focused on loss and grief and how it can be different for different people. I liked seeing how each sister handled the loss of their mother but all came together to support one another in the end. Overall this book was heart breakingly beautiful and poignant.

I should have absolutely loved How To Be Luminous, but I didn't. I liked it, I just didn't love it. In saying that, there were some elements I did love about it, but overall, I just liked it. Yeah, so I'm throwing love and like around a whole lot so let's just get to my actual review before I keep going. 

How To Be Luminous centres around Minnie, the middle Sloe sister and our narrator, as she and her sisters grieve their mother's disappearance/suicide. Her body was never found, so apart from the letter their mum left in a specific place for Minnie to find, they don't really know what happened to her. In the wake of the loss of her mum, Minnie loses her sight of colour, which is a terrible thing when you are trying to find your groove as an artist and follow in your mum's footsteps. Minnie begins to realise she may be more like her mum than she ever knew, as her loss of colour, her disconnection to her own self, her mum, her sisters and her boyfriend fall apart in an array of chaos. Meanwhile, her sisters Niko and Emmy-Kate are grieving in different ways alone and all three of them forget they are all sharing the same pain. 

Here are the things I loved about this book, in no particular order. I loved the writing style and how Harriet Reuter Hapgood incorporated creativity, colour and art into the narrative. Her writing was vivid, unique and poetic. I loved how Minnie's loss of colour was a symptom of her grief and a way through which she had to learn to come out on the other side. I loved how each of the Sloe sisters had their own character, their own voice and role in the story. I loved the quirkiness of their mum, Rachel Sloe, who you only meet in flashbacks or Minnie's visions. I loved the inclusion of art, the exploration of mental illness and the way loss in death was depicted. I loved the sunshine optimism of Minnie's boyfriend Ash and the charming darkness in the new boy, Felix Waters. I loved the sections between chapters listing descriptions of the colours Minnie had lost. 

Unfortunately, even though it sounds like I loved a lot of things about this book, I simply came out of it feeling letdown. The problem I have with this book is that it took me too long to really get into. I'm not sure if it's just my reading of it, but I couldn't connect with the  story or Minnie for the first few chapters and I don't really know why.   I probably got into it around the halfway mark, though I couldn't tell you at which point that was, and that meant for me it just felt like the book ended too quickly and with many things open ended. I wanted more development from the characters. I didn't see enough of the Sloe sisters relationship with one another and with their mum. Minnie was constantly blamed for being selfish and hateful by her sisters, which frustrated me because really, they were being a bit hypocritical.  I get that the whole mess between the sisters was because of their grief, and even though I enjoyed reading their personal feelings and the outcomes of sharing, I wanted to see them come together earlier and more so.  I also felt like Ash and Felix's roles in the book were kind of props for Minnie finding her way through her grief, or even that their characters were there just for extra drama. There were parts of their roles I really liked, but I just wish they'd added more to the story than just creating more drama in Minnie's life as she went through her own personal breakdown. 

So, to sum up, I guess I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I really wanted to love it, and sure there were parts I did, but when it comes to my overall feeling about this book, I'm simply left wishing there was more. I feel as though the depth this book went into only skimmed the potential of the characters, the sense of searching for identity and belonging, and the discussion of mental illness. Perhaps, though I adored the poetic, colourful language, I just didn't quite understand the messages the words were giving. Like many artworks, this book is a piece of art, and some people will get more out of it than others.