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Early one morning, sixteen-year-old Grace wakes to find herself staring at an ashen sunrise in ominous grey skies. It’s like watching a disaster movie, though her family don’t seem to think anything is wrong. Grace is one of only a handful of people in the country who are seeing the world in shades of grey. But this is only the beginning of the ‘greyout’, or Monochrome Effect, that is rapidly sweeping the population. And it’s not just humans – animals and birds are affected as well.
Loss of colour vision is traced to polluted water systems: microplastics covered in harmful bacteria that have been poured unchecked into the ocean for years. With widespread accidents, failing harvests and stay-at-home orders in a world that’s on the brink of a major ecological disaster, there appears to be no cure – until one day Grace sees a single flash of red…
She agrees to join a government-run study with other teenagers who experience intermittent ‘colour episodes’. They are promised that they are the key to reversing the damage, but Grace soon realises that the reality is much more complicated, shocking, and dangerous than they could ever have imagined…
