Skinned

by Robin Wasserman

Reviewed by Coral

The car crash that changes Lia Kahn’s life was also the car crash that ended her life.

In order to save their daughter, Lia’s parents turn to a controversial procedure and have Lia’s brain downloaded into a mechanical body.

Lia hates her new body. She doesn’t breath, doesn’t eat, won’t age and will never die. Nothing feels right with her new body. Worse, she is rejected by her friends, her boyfriend and even her sister.

Is it even possible for Lia to find acceptance, both from others and from herself?

I enjoyed this book as the first of a series, though I don’t think the author delved deep enough into the world she had created.

Lia spends most (a part of me wants to say the whole) of the book adjusting to her new life. And while the change is a drastic one, that is well handled by the author, at some point I kind of wished she would do something more than just endlessly complain. That said, I did think that she was a well written character. I could understand why she made certain decisions. I just wish that some of the adjustment period could have been skimmed over.

In any book set in the future, there’s always a danger that it won’t feel realistic, if that’s the right word to use. I like to be able to believe that the future the author has created is one that may actually happen. With this book, I thought the author created a future that I could believe may happen. The book is set in a time after a lot of upheaval – wars, atmospheric disaster – that I wish we could have more detail on, but as our narrator Lia doesn’t really care much about the past at this point, we didn’t get the detail I would have liked.

I liked the implication that there were darker motivations at play behind the beginning of the download procedure and I hope that gets explored in future books.

On the whole, it was an enjoyable first book of a new series, but I will be expecting the second book to go deeper into the world and to move past just being about Lia’s feelings.

Grade: B