Yellow by Lena Nottingham is the first book in a trilogy about the college life of Shiloh Everest after she was outed by Paisley Lowe in front of the entire high school cafeteria. After moving into an apartment in New York with her three best friends, Shiloh gets an unexpected visitor. Paisley Lowe is standing in the threshold of their home, but she seems very different. This first book shows the reader the growth of the relationship between Shiloh and Paisley and why Paisley has changed so much.
I enjoyed this book because the plot is unique to its genre, which is romance-mystery. It is innocent, heartwarming, and suspenseful all at once. Even though, Paisley has obviously been through a traumatic experience to get to the state that she is in, it is not a highly predictable. In addition, it is not immediately known what is wrong with Paisley as seen by her first interactions with the girls. ““Paisley?" Leah spoke again, giving the girls a nod to try and tell them she could handle this. The shorter girl walked over to Paisley, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Why do you need a bed? Where'd you come from?""My house," Paisley shrugged. She seemed completely oblivious to the fact that the other girls in the room all had been at the receiving end of her reign of terror in high school. "Do you have a bed? I need one of those.”” This passage is significant because it is not only one of the first interactions that Paisley has with the girls, but it is the first sign that there is something off with her considering that her house is all the way in Miami. Another aspect I enjoyed about the plot was that it was not only about the relationship between Shiloh and Paisley, but about the relationships between all of the girls too. Although, I would have liked to see a bit more of the relationships between Paisley and the other girls because most of their dynamics, in this book, were them ‘babysitting’ Paisley while waiting for Shiloh to come home. The character development between both girls are evident in each chapter which keeps the reader engaged and help the story not seem drawn out.
There are multiple themes in Yellow, but one in particular stands out: respect and be nice to yourself. Many other books have a theme of respecting others, so people can often forget that self care is just as important as taking care of others. There is a passage in the next book in the series that puts it in a very interesting way “"There's flowers in your brain," she explained, using her free hand to lace their fingers together. "You hurt them when you're mean to yourself."” Even though this passage is from the next book, Blue, it is still hinted at in this one, for example when Shiloh tells Paisley to “admire the pretty things from afar”. The flowers analogy also comes from Yellow because in the beginning Paisley picks the flowers that Shiloh’s drawing, and while Shiloh gets angry, she tells her not to kill the “pretty things”. This theme is what made the book so scintillating and unique because in most books like this the disabled character uses the able-bodied character as a crutch, but Shiloh is teaching Paisley how to do certain things and slowly venture out on her own.
To conclude, I would recommend this book to people who enjoy comedy-romance-mystery type novels. This book was engaging and has the ability to draw out emotions from the reader.