I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Inez is missing, but missing things can always be found.

Mae knows this as a fact, even though the police investigation has come to a standstill, even though her parents are moving on. But when she goes to clear out her older sister’s studio, she finds a mess of research and a white canvas that seems even older than the ornate frame it is set in. The closer Mae gets to the canvas, the more difficult it is to pull her eyes away from its mottled surface, its heavy layers of white paint, its peeling top corner she is tempted to pull to see what’s beneath. But she doesn’t. Not yet.

Short and Sweet Review

Mae’s sister Inez is missing, but she has a feeling that she can be found. It’s been awhile and her parents are moving on and even the police case has come to a halt. Mae drives down to Inez’s studio apartment to clean it out and finds a canvas with a peeling corner, not only that but a strange boy is also in the apartment. Dev was Inez’s neighbor and when Mae decides to trace Inez’s lasts steps he comes along for the ride.

Portrait of a Shadow is a retelling of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” which I haven’t read which is probably why I found the synopsis so interesting. When Mae finds the canvas she also finds Inez’s notes about it and also shows that she became somewhat obsessed with it. We have chapters that are interludes which shows people getting enticed by the canvas and eventually sucked into it. We also see chapters from the past which include Dev, his brother, and a friend. I did like that the chapters from the past show how big a role classism played between the three boys and how it ended up influencing some of the decisions that were made. This is a relatively short book and we learn about the characters along the way, I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters so there was a big disconnect there for me. This book is described as horror but there wasn’t anything like that, at least in my eyes, if there was anything scary it was pretty mild. The ending was pretty surprising, I wasn’t expecting what happened so that was a plus to me.

Overall, I didn’t enjoy this book the way I thought I would. Portrait of a Shadow has all of the elements to make a great story but it just fell short and I think it may have something to do with the length, there wasn’t enough time to really do a deep dive into these characters. The ending makes it seem like there could be a sequel and I would be interested to see what could happen next.