2.5 stars. This could've been a really hard hitting and poignant story about family, adoption, art, suicide, queerness, and grief. But it was just.......boring.

I enjoyed the art themes; the friendship between Danny and Harry; the high school senior year/pre-college anxiety; and Danny building up to coming out.

Unfortunately that's about it.

Above all, this book is boring. Nothing happens for 200 pages and those 200 pages are seemingly devoid of plot. You can't tell if the author is deliberately obscuring things from the reader for the purposes of a plot twist, or if she's just unintentionally confusing the reader.

When the plot twist - and plot - are eventually revealed, things start to pick up. It tackles some complex themes and a really difficult and sad family history. However, unfortunately the story remains obfuscated by parents who stubbornly refuse to tell their son the truth, and it's annoying as fuck as a reader. While I appreciate that it's realistic & some parents would behave in this way, it leads to a really unpleasant and frustrating reading experience with little payoff.

Additionally, I wish the art had been explored in more depth. I just came off the back of Emily XR Pan's The Astonishing Colour of After, which explores art in the most beautiful and immersive way. In that book you can practically visualise the colours and the protagonist's pencil strokes, but in Picture Us in the Light, it's like hearing about someone who swears they're good at art, but never actually shows you.

I also didn't love the writing style. It's fairly plain and straight forward, but unfortunately that also means it's devoid of colour and emotion. And this book needed colour and emotion.

I should've listened to my gut and DNFed this at 100 pages.