Colorful
by Eto Mori
translated by Jocelyne Allen
Where to buy: Amazon | Bookshop.org
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Content note: suicide/self-harm.
What It’s About
Colorful is a Japanese novel about a soul who gets what feels like a strange second chance. After death, he’s placed into the body of fourteen-year-old Makoto Kobayashi, a boy who has just died by suicide.
The soul is told he has one job: to remember the biggest mistake of his past life while living as Makoto. As he moves through Makoto’s days, he starts to see Makoto’s family and classmates more clearly, and begins to understand what Makoto may have misunderstood.
What Stuck With Me
This felt like a healing book, but not in the usual way.
It’s YA, it reads like something teenagers can understand, but adults can still take something from. And it’s the kind of book that works best when you’re willing to slow down and actually think about what it’s trying to show you.
The biggest thing I took from Colorful is how much we don’t see. We move through the world assuming we understand what other people think, what their intentions are, what their expressions mean. We make quick judgments. We fill in blanks. We decide things without evidence. And then we react like our assumptions are facts.
This book pushes back on that. It reminds you that everyone has their own private weight to carry. That your interpretation of something might be incomplete. That the story you’ve built in your head might be wrong. And that sometimes, the difference between surviving and not surviving is simply having enough time for your understanding to shift.
One thing I do want to say clearly though: suicide is real, and it isn’t solved by magic. People who feel that desperate don’t “win the lottery” and get handed a neat second chance to figure out what they did wrong. So I don’t read this as a literal message. I read it as a story trying to create space for a conversation, and to remind people that their view of life, and of themselves, might not be the full picture.
Would I Recommend It
Yes.
I think this would be a great book for teens, and for adults too. Especially for anyone who likes reflective stories that feel gentle but still serious. It also feels like a book that could open up real discussions, because it doesn’t treat the topic like a plot twist. It treats it like something human.
My takeaway
You don’t always see the full truth of a life, including your own.
If you like this you may also like:
If you liked the coming-of-age perspective in Colorful, Go is another smart, character-driven story about identity and belonging.
If you liked the way Colorful handles misunderstanding and emotional pressure, I Am Not Jessica Chen is a great follow-up read.
