Saturday 11 July 2015

Reviewed: Under My Skin by Zoe Markham.







Under My Skin was published by Carina on March 31, 2015.


Thanks to the author and Jenny Marston for the review copy.



Under My Skin is a book I’d had my eye on for a while – it sounded super intriguing and unlike anything I normally read. I’m excited to say that this book lived up to my every expectation. I was engrossed, too engrossed to put this book down or to speak to anybody or move or even breathe. The story is all-consuming and fascinating and heart-wrenching. So good. Chloe would love nothing more than to be your average teenage girl. She feels normal teenage girl things – the pains of growing up and all the various feelings and moods that come with it. But she isn’t that typical teenage girl – under the surface there’s a lot of startling depths to her character – and she resents that she doesn’t have to chance to live the straight-forward life.

Chloe was involved in a tragic car accident which killed her mother but her kind-of crazy, scientist dad provides Chloe with survival, though surviving is putting it loosely since she’s barely existing at all. I was intrigued by the relationship between Chloe and her father. From the beginning, he seemed very protective, suffocatingly so, and I couldn’t help but wonder what had led him to become so obsessive and possessive. Chloe tried her hardest to work on her father, to gradually pull pieces of her life back together. Seeing her step-by-step return to school was quite powerful and moving as I wondered how they would take her character and if it was possible for her to ever feel accepted and not so alone.

When we first meet Chloe, there seems to be some sort of shame surrounding her character. We don’t get to learn much initially as it is all built in to blow us away later on but from the opening pages, I was desperate to learn more. Why did she have to be so shut away? Why is she being isolated? Why have they moved? Why isn’t she allowed to live a normal life? This book brought with it so many questions and I just couldn’t get enough of it. I liked the contrast between all the harsh, scary issues that came with Chloe’s life up against standard teenage things like worries about schools and boys. The character of Chloe was so beautifully explored by the author and she’s one of those characters I found impossible not to be rooting for, even at the beginning when it’s all a mystery and I wasn’t sure quite what to think of her.

Under My Skin is one of those novels I want everyone to read. It’s so different, so special in its own right. It’s something very different in the Young Adult market right now and Zoe deserves to have her book read and appreciated. I know I felt like it got better and better as the story developed and I was virtually gripping on to my Kindle like my life depended on it, biting my nails as the tension racked up and all the secrets and truths unfolded. Every little thing we learnt about Chloe’s story had me gripped and when we got to discover more, I was like a kid at Christmas, desperately unwrapping at a manic pace to get more and more out of this story. Under My Skin is a breathtakingly good, fresh and modern twist on Frankenstein and there are so many different themes and genres blended into one, here, it’s very impressive. Just don’t expect to be putting this book down in a hurry. Who needs sleep anyway?


Extraordinarily told, moving story of a girl who just wants to live.







a Rafflecopter giveaway



4 comments:

  1. Lots and lots of books! My wishlist is full of them so will probably start at the bottom and see how far I can get. Thanks for the giveaway. Lx

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  2. I would spend it on loads of books, I could probably get at least 15 kindle books quite happily on a voucher that size!

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  3. It would certainly make a dent in my Kindle books wishlist :) thanks for the chance! x

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  4. I've got a lot of books in my wishlist waiting for me to have some money to spend on them ;) Thanks for the opportunity!

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