MONDAYS ARE RED by Nicola Morgan

Luke wakes up in hospital to find he has nearly died. And now he can smell colours and see sound. He has developed synaesthesia, a condition where the senses are muddled and mixed. Luke’s world is now a feast of wild sensation and imagination. But there’s something else. Inside his mind, Luke is no longer alone. A smooth-tongued, shape-shifting tempter has arrived and he’s out to steal Luke’s soul. Thus begins a tense and compelling tale in which different layers of reality merge together into an anxiety-wracked psychological horror story. Set in the midst of a brain-numbing heat wave, the reader is taken on a rollercoaster ride through Luke’s mindscape, as he veers from vivid, hallucinatory wish-fulfilment to furious loathing, and a disturbingly fierce disgust levelled at his older sister. All concludes in fire. Peace is restored in the end, but some mysteries still hang in the air. Who exactly was the devilish tempter inside Luke’s head? It seems the answer is that he was Luke himself, not a particularly comforting thought. Luke’s wise grandfather appears to sort out the facts from the tricks of the mind, but I was still left musing on the possibility that the entire story, grandpa included, might be being played out inside Luke’s head. In which case Hannah, the girl he meets at the end, had better watch out!