ARC Review- Painted Blind by Michelle A. Hansen

Painted Blind by Michelle A. Hansen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book Blurb: Seventeen years old and agoraphobic, Psyche Middleton vows her dad will never see the risqué photos she took during a summer modeling stint abroad, but one of them ends up on a billboard in her Montana hometown. Now everyone—especially her dad—can see it. And yet, somehow, those are the mundane things in her life because she is about to fall unexpectedly, head-over-heels in love with Erik, a mysterious young man who rescues her from a crowd of admirers, and who she’s never actually seen because…he can make himself invisible.

As strange as this may seem, it’s about to get even stranger. Erik takes her to his palace in an idyllic kingdom, and she is swept into the beauty and culture of his world, but his affection has one condition: she may not see him. Overtaken, intrigued, and still not wholeheartedly believing he’s real, Psyche is going to have to decide if she can love him blindly; because if she can’t, she may lose him forever.

An e-copy of this book has been provided to me by the author for an honest review.

Review: When I first saw the cover, I thought this might just be another YA contemporary fiction but nonetheless, I liked it so I went on to read the summary which was quite different from what I'd first assumed. Painted Blind is a YA fiction fantasy based on a Greek/Roman mythology.

Now ever since I've read Percy Jackson, I've been a big fan of Greek myth so obviously, this book intrigued me. Even kept my full interest till the 15th chapter or so. But as the story went on, I just felt that there was something missing in this novel. Don't get me wrong. The story was absolutely spectacular and well thought of, but I'm afraid I can't say the same about the writing style. The author herself seemed confused as to how to proceed once or twice. After every chapter, I was left confused about some things or several things.

Nonetheless, there were some really great elements in the book. The main female protagonist was likable and pretty brave. The starting was really nicely written and there was a sweet happy ending which I liked. You get that so rarely in real life. *Sigh*

I couldn't believe Psyche, when she actually blindly loved Erik without seeing him. I mean, what if he turned out having a purple face with black teeth? To say, she was being blind AND dumb regarding this, is really putting it mildly. I know, I know looks don't matter and bla bla bla, so it was bearable UNTIL out of the blue, she's betrothed to him, STILL CLUELESS ABOUT HIS FACE. The good side of these things was that they created a curiosity within me to know how the story was actually gonna end. Somewhere in the middle of the story, it seemed like there might be a love triangle after all, but thankfully that didn't happen.

Overall, there were several good and bad points of this book. But I can't rule out the fact that despite the problems I had with it, I still couldn't stop reading the story. So the accurate rating for this book from my side would be 3.5 stars and yes, I would like to recommend it to all YA fantasy romance lovers.