Indigo Blues and Pure Red Young Adult Novels Reviewed

She probably slobbered.

What are they? A pair of Young Adult novels written by Danielle Joseph, who also gave us Shrinking Violet upon which the DCOM Radio Rebel is based on.
Where did it air? Ummm...well they're books so you can get them wherever you get books. I got mine from the library because library.
Who stars in them? Umm...well, like I just said they were both written by Danielle Joseph who also wrote Shrinking Violet upon which Radio Rebel was based on
Why are we reviewing this? Well since I reviewed Shrinking Violet when I reviewed Radio Rebel I figure why not review the other two novels Joseph has written, so there.

So, one's pretty disappointing and the other is...pretty decent.

Spoiler alert: Indigo Blues is the disappointing one. The middle novel in publication sequence (Shrinking Violet being first - Joseph's first novel, in fact - and Pure Red being the latest) it's...meh-tastic with a little bit of enough gender stereotypes and pidgeon-holing to make me feel a little uncomfortable. It's about a girl in high school who dated an older guy who's old enough to be looking into college graduation and then they broke up, and the older guy wrote a song about her, and they have a bunch of angst about the other thanks to memories drudged up by what turns out to be this hit song. Really, the plot is almost a straight-up ripoff of another book, Audrey Wait!, which was written around the time of Shrinking Violet and (yes I've read that book too) I think vastly superior to Indigo Blues here. So, I would just recommend you read that book instead, really.

And that's even after main character Indigo's best friend turns out to be a redhead.

Pure Red ends up being much better because if nothing else I feel it's more developed. It's about a girl who's on her high school basketball team and not only does she have to put up with a bully but also her dead mom and her aloof, painter dad and yadda yadda, trust me it's pretty decent. It's a bit of a slow read - and by that I don't mean it's boring but it is the type of book you'd probably want to read in a more casual, relaxed setting (outdoors on a nice breezy day isn't a bad suggestion, for example). It's a rather, um, "character-contemplative", character-driven and introspective book (like Shrinking Violet, in all fairness) so if you're really into that (like me, apparently) then you're good to go. But you shouldn't really be expecting a lot of plot-heavy developments, in other words. It's very much following the main character, Cassia, and her thoughts but not necessarily in an action-oriented way (and I don't mean in the explosion-laden, Die Hard way but in action period). Oh and speaking of which you probably caught onto the color symbolism from the titles of the books alone here but Pure Red really gets into color symbolism as part of its narrative. In both Shrinking Violet and Indigo Blues it's really more about musical symbolism, again given Danielle Joseph's background in DJ'ing and radio.

Neither book is as good as Shrinking Violet and Shrinking Violet still has a more tightly-constructed narrative than Pure Red, but Pure Red's still an interesting read if you're interested in reading more from the author that ultimately brought you Radio Rebel.

So...in conclusion I'm not really going to talk about the one book because I think there's basically the same book out there that you should read instead, and I'm not really going to talk much about the other book in case you feel like reading it yourself, but there you go, that should give you enough of a review to go on. Whew, that turned out to be a shorter review than I thought.

Yeah, I'm still taking my morning coffee. Like I said in the last Andi Mack review, nobody's human without coffee in the morning.

Novel Grades: C- for Indigo Blues, a flat B or maybe even a B+ for Pure Red. I rated them both three stars and four stars respectively on Goodreads if that means anything.
Favorite Novel Character: I guess Indigo by default in Indigo Blues (really I didn't feel very much attached to any of the characters as indicated by all those words I used above and its C- score) and, eh, probably Cassia in Pure Red too. Like I said in Shrinking Violet, Joseph really likes to focus on her mains, which is noticeable even with books written in the first person perspective.

Extra Thoughts

 - Like I said we already have a winner for the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 contest and the prize has already been rewarded but I'll have a follow-up post for that soon. And I'm even thinking of doing another contest soon, though I won't make any promises (I'm kinda going back and fourth)

 - I've written about the power of books before and I keep making promises to do it again, but reading even Indigo Blues reminds me why I like reading so much and why I like being in the publishing industry so far, but, eh, I guess that really is just an Extra Thought.