In The Skin Of A Monster
This book contains shooting and violence, be warned if you are uncomfortable with these things.
Another day, another review. This review is going to be about a book called In The Skin Of A Monster by Kathryn Barker. The title of this book accurately describes how the protagonist, Alice, is thought to be a monster since she supposedly took a gun to school three years ago and shot seven innocent kids at a school. Everyone in the town was shocked and Alice starts to struggle with her public identity as a "murderer". Alice decides to head out onto an old highway where she meets a ghost-figured girl standing on the opposite side of the road. As Alice approaches the girl, she gets transported to a world filled with nightmares. This world is known as a "dream world", featuring the nightmares and dreams of the townspeople. Alice goes through this world and finds her former classmate, Lux. Lux despises Alice but yet they must escape this dream world together.
Overall, this book was a bit hard to understand what was going on. You had two main protagonists and every now and then the author would swap between the two perspectives that tell their side of the story. Then soon enough, those two characters would meet at a point in the book and continue along with their journey. But instead of going along based off of the character's perspective, the reader is mainly trying to figure out the situation. Sometimes the characters give hints of their backstory which the reader has to connect that piece of information to the current event in the book. I am personally not a big fan of books like these since it starts to make the plot all confusing and perplexed. Along with that, the author would have either Alice or Lux end their perspective on an important note, then it immediately starts with the other perspective. Barker could have done this on purpose to add some sort of suspense so you start to wonder what is happening with that character, but it feels more of an inconvenience as you read the current perspective while keeping that cliffhanger in your brain.
It's not a bad book if you enjoy reading books that focus on plot progression rather than creating a mental connection with the character, but I do think that the way Barker structured the book is interesting. The dream world that is the setting for most of the book is like a way for Alice to deal with the trauma and torture she went through as she had to live with the burden of being a so-called monster for three years.
Setting: 9/10
Characters/Identity: 6/10
-Adrian Tso
Hi Adrian, I enjoy having to piece stories for yourself, as I feel like you can use your imagination more, making the book more interesting for yourself. Although I do understand your opinion on books like these, and I feel like based on the way you described this book it used this writing style poorly.
ReplyDeleteInteresting review Adrian! I like books where the author provides you with mysteries to solve alongside the characters unless the writing is really bad or the situation is not clearly provided, which is what this book seems to be. However, I do find the “dream world” idea to be quite unique.
ReplyDeleteHi Adrian! This book sounds really interesting, but I can understand why you don't like the characters. Great review!
ReplyDeleteThis book sounds weird. It turns from a grounded story from the guilt of a killer, to a odd fantasy title in a very short period of time. I don't think I'll check out this book, because I like to be able to see myself in the characters, and you pointed out that that doesn't happen. Nice review!
ReplyDeleteNice review, I liked your description of the wacky plot. I also hate books that switch between perspective right before one perspective reaches a climax. (P.S. you can copy image links from online and insert them into blogger by URL)
ReplyDeleteHi Adrian,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like the way this books plot was hard to follow, but sometimes it is interesting when books give different perspectives. Did Alice actually shoot people or do people just think she did?