Chris Whitaker’s We Begin at the End is one of my favourite books of all time. It was the first book that didn’t feature a grand plot or fantastical elements or anything that usually impresses me and yet still left me feeling something.
This article contains affiliate links. This means if you choose to purchase any products via the links below, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. These affiliate links do not affect my final opinion of the product.
When All the Colours of the Dark came up on my radar and then I saw it was getting all sorts of positive reviews, I simply knew that I had to read it. I was so excited. But, unfortunately, spoiler alert: I just didn’t like it as much as I’d hoped.
All the Colours of the Dark tells the story of when a teenager manages to escape an abduction attempt, but his friend isn’t so lucky and completely vanishes. It follows the survivor and an artist friend over several decades as they become obsessed with finding out what actually happened. It’s a conversation about the trauma they all face along the way too.
All the Colours of the Dark plot – 4.25/5
In my introduction, I gave a sneak spoiler that I didn’t like All the Colours of the Dark as much as I’d hoped I would. This doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t have the respect for it that it deserves either. I get the message here, I just felt like it fumbled a long a little and didn’t grab me in enough to keep me intrigued.
The story starts off strong with an abduction attempt gone wrong which results in someone else actually going missing. This had me interested. But then the rest of the plot is about friends spending decades trying to work out what’s happened and at no point did I really care enough to get deeply enveloped. There didn’t feel like any major plot moments after this, nothing big happened and there wasn’t a moment where I felt “ok, now you’ve got my interest again” unfortunately.
Now, Whitaker’s writing is still spectacular in this and is still such a joy to read, even if I wasn’t actually that interested in the plot itself. So this and the strong start and the respect I have for the messages and human factor involved are why I gave the plot the score I did.
All the Colours of the Dark characters – 4/5
In a very similar tone to my thoughts on the plot, the characters in All the Colours of the Dark are clearly well written but simply didn’t click with me.
In We Begin at the End, I loved one of the young main protagonists, Duchess Radley – she was unlike many other young characters I’d read before and thus left a lasting impression with me.
Unfortunately, I just didn’t get that with All The Colours of the Dark. There was no one in this book who I was really interested to keep reading about.
But, like with the plot I do have an understanding of how deep these characters actually were. It may sound like a contradiction for me to write this but I can fully respect why so many people enjoyed this book for its deep character development, I’m simply pointing out that I struggled to feel connected to any of them and thus they all remained fairly forgettable for me.
All The Colours of the Dark final rating – 4.25/5
All the Colours of the Dark has been one of the hardest books to write a review for that I’ve ever had to do. It’s a book that I KNOW is good but yet I simply didn’t enjoy as much as I’d hoped I would. I can see it’s well written, I can tell that the story is emotional and complex and I can fully understand how the characters would build on this. But it doesn’t stop the fact that when I got to the end, I put it down and didn’t really feel anything like I did with We Begin At The End.
Buy a copy of All The Colours of the Dark
