Painted Black got a 5 star review on The To Be Read Pile!

TBR Reviewer: Daniella

A funeral home developing a new way to freeze dry the dead. A man who loves his work and the beauties that he has preserved. A 15 year old prostitute that goes missing during a break in at the funeral home. A homeless boy looking for his friend gone missing. A young reporter who writes a column on the street life of Chicago. A man who has given up a successful practice to work as a counselor at a shelter. In order to expose the shady business and find the missing girl, the boy and reporter must put their preconceptions and trust each other.

This is a crime/suspense/mystery kind of book, but at the forefront are all the characters that Debra R Borys portrays so well. This was one of those books where you start reading and before you can even blink you are almost done with it. I was so caught up with the characters of this book. Chris, who has chosen to live on the streets so that his parents have one less mouth to feed, is jaded from the hard life he lives, but he still tries to help others and stand up for those more vulnerable than him. Jo, has estranged herself from her family because of her father’s crimes. She writes a column with stories from the streets, but she has never really seen the people that live on the street until she is involved in the lives of Chris and his now missing friend Lexie. Even Sidney, the man who works at the funeral home and who has a strange fascination with the dead is an interesting character.

This is a book that is very far from my own sheltered reality and it certainly makes you think. I can´t usually take too much harsh reality when reading fiction, but this was such a well told story, that in all the misery it still focused on the positive.

Painted Black was a great story and I am glad I got a chance to read it!

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