I am back with another Monday Reviews! This week, I am reviewing Painless by S.A. Harazin. Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book to review! All opinons are my own.
A first kiss. Falling in love. Going to prom. These are all normal things that most teenagers experience. Except for 17-year-old David Hart. His life is anything but normal and more difficult than most. Because of the disease that wracks his body, David is unable to feel pain.
He has congenital insensitivity to pain with anhydrosis--or CIPA for short. One of only a handful of people in the world who suffer from CIPA, David can't do the things every teenager does. He might accidentally break a limb and not know it. If he stands too close to a campfire, he could burn his skin and never feel it. He can't tell if he has a fever and his temperature is rising.
Abandoned by his parents, David now lives with his elderly grandmother who is dying. When David's legal guardian tells him that he needs to move into an assisted living facility as he cannot live alone, David is determined to prove him wrong. He creates a bucket list, meets a girl with her own wish list, and then sets out to find his parents.
All David wants to do is grow old, beat the odds, find love, travel the world, and see something spectacular. And he still wants to find his parents. While he still can.
This was definitely a unique book for me to read.
For the most part, I enjoyed this book. David's condition was one that I wasn't very familiar with, but I had heard briefly of it, and frankly it was a nice change from the other physical illness books that deal mainly with cancer (yes, I'm looking at you TFiOS knockoffs).
I did feel like at the beginning that David sounded a little young, younger than I would have liked, but as the story progressed, I was able to see his age a bit more and that helped show the growth.
I felt like some parts were a little irrational, like David's parents just dumping him at his grandparents, I don't know, maybe its just because I cannot fathom leaving my kid and running off. I also was confused that he wasn't more upset but then again, he can't feel pain. (oh, I see what you did there!)
I did like part three the most, who doesn't love a good road trip! This was probably one of the more realistic road trips I've read, you get lost, you run into bad weather, etc.
Overall, I enjoyed this book, I flew through it, but I didn't love it. That being said, it was a refreshing change from the usual books I read.