Painless by S.A. Harazin

Gut Instinct Rating - 4.5

Story Line - 4.5

Writing Style - 4

Characters - 5

Excitement Factor - 4

Believability for type and topics - 5

Similarity to other books - 5

Cover art - 4

Title Relevance - 5

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.37. I think it was more deserving of a 4.56.

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Published in 2015.

Pages: 297.

Number of books by author: 2 Novels.

Genre: YA Fiction.

David suffers from a disease called CIPA (for short). David is incapable of feeling temperature, pain, and struggles with some other things that simply complicate his life. If you've ever wanted to not feel pain, this book is a perfect list of reasons why not feeling pain is more difficult than feeling pain.

You may like this book if you like the following sub-genres:

• Disabilities

• Invisible Illness

• Bucket List

This book took me by surprise. What I thought was entirely a work of fiction, turned out to have quite a bit of truth in it. I suffer from fibromyalgia, which means more time than not, I'm begging the body-God's and the fibro-God's to relieve me of my pain forever. I've never wanted to feel my pain (I mean, honestly, if you could go on without feeling bruises and broken bones and such, you'd probably do it, too - even if you're a normal, healthy individual). I learned about an incredibly rare disease while also exploring my own pain management, paired with a little bit of teen drama.

I would've probably titled this a 4.5 regardless of the ending, which I felt didn't really make sense, but there were too many dull moments. If I were to lok back on the summary notes from each chapter, I'd probably be able to cross most of it out because it really just was blah-blah-blah, space filler, time filler, nonsense. I think for a YA book, that's what a lot of teenagers want. They don't want the science, and they don't want these adult-like stories. They want to read what they relate to, and I get that, so I think for a YA book, it was fine. It scored really low on Goodreads, so I was a bit skeptical before I started reading, but I enjoyed it. I would've, as stated earlier, liked to see a more comprehensive ending that provided me with some closure, because it felt like it was leading into a sequel, and there isn't one been published at this time. I also really hated the choppiness of the chapters. I mentioned this in my last review as well... but I would rather have things broken up by "The next day, Luna and I..." But the author would have like two paragraphs and then transition with +++ to an entirely different setting, day, and there'd be whole new conversations taking place. It was just really abrupt, and I'll probably always complain about this type of writing style. I want to see things flow and be easier to read than have to really think about an author's poor choice of transitions.

The characters, however, were done perfectly. I could go on for days about David's CIPA, but the author really studied the disease (or has it herself), because she was very knowledgeable, the few statistics used in the book were in fact accurate (a simple google search will give you the data,

so it wasn't plagued with science if that's a concern). She really got inside David's day-to-day life and made you really learn what it's like to live with someone who has CIPA. More interestingly, someone who has far-exceeded CIPA's life-expectancy, which then brings in more struggles as David is an 18-year-old young man who wants his freedoms despite how CIPA continuously impacts his life. The caregivers were well placed - I think the differences between Spencer & Luna were really important. You had a friend who was paid to watch over David, and then you had a caregiver who was paid to care for David. I didn't really care for Luna's character, however. I felt she was too wishy-washy and I would've liked the reasoning for that to be explored way earlier on in the novel, but again, this goes back to the writing style and story line and just not loving the way it was placed together. The author did a fairly good job exploring Grandma's dementia and how that also effects David's life as her primary care-taker. The secondary characters were routine, bringing a little this or that from the stereotypical teen groups. I thought the plug for a band in this book was a bit strange. I didn't really impact or hurt the story, but I didn't think it was really flowing with the story line, either. This was certainly one of those books that the characters were the story line, rather than them being a part of the story line. And that's a huge difference - and if you read a lot, you might understand the difference. But the story line was impacted by some of the secondary characters which made it a bit "meh."

I wasn't really sure why the cover-art existed as it did. I personally thought it was a girl on the cover, so when I learned that the main character, David, was a male (and identified as a male), I was a bit confused. I didn't really get the ocean reference. I mean, sure, it was discussed and it was part of a few scenes, but I didn't think it was that in-tune with the story line and the personality of the characters. I'm not sure how you illustrate CIPA, but I think there's probably a way a painter could've gotten inside the diagnosis rather than us looking at some waves. The title, which drew me into this story since I have fibromyalgia, was perfect. I mean, you could've named it CIPA, but I don't think as many people would've dove in.

I'm still not entirely sure why this book scored so low on Goodreads. Not a lot of people have read it, so I don't know if it's too advanced for younger-readers (I personally don't think it is), or if there's not been a lot of help from the publishers. I'm not entirely sure where I heard of it, but it made its way to my TBR, and I'm glad I read it.

"How come a dog understands me and people don't?" - pg. 149

#truelifetuesday #truestorythursday