Granted: Curse of the Emerald Jinn by Rachel Huffmire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Liam Covington is a typical teenager, he goes to high school and has a close friend group, but as hard as he tries to keep a low profile while he is there, the other kids are always messing with him, bullying him and generally making his life awkward, but what they don’t know is that he can see colours all around him, not just normal colours, they are attached to people and they get brighter when he is going to be messed around with, but even if he did tell someone, they wouldn’t believe him anyway.

As usual his day starts with someone pushing him over on the way to school, but today, he is going on the school field trip to the desert and he is hoping that it won’t get much worse, however, when he gets on the bus, he can see the colours everywhere and tries to mind his own business. When they get there and the ranger starts talking about the desert, it’s geological features and the life which teams within it, all the kids are just waiting until they can go and play on the dunes, but Liam is enjoying the tour and talk just as much, he is also reminiscing about the family holiday he used to have as well. He crests one of the sand dunes and breathes in the air, thoroughly enjoying himself until he is drawn to a midnight blue colour smoke which is making patterns in the sand below him, this is when danger strikes and he steps into a sinkhole just as a dust devil appears and mixes in with the smoke and swirls towards him but he cannot move or- avoid the sand swirling around him, he tries to dig into the sand and find some kind of purchase to get away from it all. The next thing he knows is Kenna, a girl he has been trying to avoid comes to his rescue, pulls him out of the sand and offers him some water, his head hurts and he feels exhausted and gritty, but still he picks up the unusual shell and walks back to the bus with his friend supporting him.

Things start to go from bad to worse when his brother and mother find out what happened and are mad at him for not telling them as soon as he saw them, but it gets worse when the colours start getting brighter and start to appear in people’s eyes, not to mention the school gossip which is making his life worse, especially when it comes to Kenna, someone who he swore not to talk to again after their families had a disagreement years ago. Meanwhile, he begins to see what he thinks are hallucinations and the shell he picked up in the desert is either burning hot or covered in the blue designs he can see in his hallucinations, but what happens next shocks him into realising that maybe his hallucinations are real and that they may be able to give him some answers as to why he sees the colours and nobody else does. This is a fantasy adventure which will have you speeding along with Liam while he tries to work out the mystery of why he experiences what he does, while trying to live a life as normally as he can.

Reviewed by @roxsannel

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