Painless

      I had really high expectations for Painless, especially after reading an except from Buzzbook's 2015 YA release. However, I feel the author, S. A. Harazin, tried to accomplish too much in this short novel.

      David Hart is a seventeen year old with CIPA. CIPA is an extremely rare, fatal disease where one cannot feel pain, produce tears or regulate one's own body temperature. Most born with CIPA die before they are teenagers, and it's a miracle that David's grandparents have kept him alive this far. David needs constant care in order to make sure his body isn't over or under-heating and that he doesn't have any potentially fatal injuries that he can't feel.

      David lives with his grandmother because his mother abandoned him as a baby and his father, seemingly unable to care for David's medical leaves, also abandoned David at his grandparent's house and never came back. David has always wanted to find his mother and father (and laugh in their faces!) and begins the journey to find them during this novel.

      This novel takes you on a journey through David's sheltered eyes to find love, independence and freedom. 

      Now..where I think the author lost a lot of people in this novel was in the overuse of medical problems the characters were given. This novel is pretty complex, which I praise it for, and makes it hard for me to give a brief review on, but you have David's CIPA, his grandmother's dementia and  Luna's cancer to deal with just to list a few. I think if the author had just fully focused on CIPA, a rare disease itself, that a lot more could of been accomplished. Instead, David fell a little flat at me for times because he wasn't always the focus, even though he's the main character.

     Overall, I did enjoy the book, I just wasn't fully satisfied by it.