Title: Skinned
Author: Robin Wasserman
Year of Publication: 2008
Genre: YA, sci-fi, futuristic
Pages: 361
First Line: "Lia Kahn is dead."
Summary: Lia Kahn was perfect: rich, beautiful, popular--until the accident that nearly killed her. Now she has been downloaded into a new body that only looks human. Lia will never feel pain again, she will never age, and she can't ever truly die. But she is also rejected by her friends, betrayed by her boyfriend, and alienated from her old life.
Forced to the fringes of society, Lia joins others like her. But they are looked at as freaks. They are hated. . .and feared. They are everything but human, and according to most people, this is the ultimate crime--for which they must pay the ultimate price.
Source: Back of book
Review: Skinned was fantastic. I haven't read a futuristic/sci-fi book in awhile and I loved this one. While it is fairly different from the Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld, it's up there in the same ranks as far as how good it is. The book brings forth some interesting philosophies and questions. The characters were absolutely fantastic and even before I finished the book, I started a fanfic for Auden/Lia. One of the great things about this book was that it wasn't set in a time -- it vaguely referred to the past but even fifty years from now, someone could read this and not think, "Hey, this doesn't matched what happened," which I feel is a problem with books like this, but name a date, such as 1984. This book could be read in the future and still be thought of as a futuristic society novel.
Aside from it being scifi, I felt it was all very realistic, specifically character relationships and subtle actions by the characters which showed how they were feeling without the narrator telling. Wasserman does a great job of keeping it in first-person without making it seem that the other characters don't have lives of their own and that they aren't the star of their own novels.
All-in-all, I greatly look forward to getting my hands on the next book and am even considering buying this one in paperback (is it already out?) in the near future. Definitely worth checking out, even if you're not into sci-fi.
Worst part: I will say there was something a little bit off about Walker -- he wasn't quite like the other characters. However, that may be intentional and we'll find out in the sequels. Also, I would have liked more with Ben and Asa.
Best part: The writing style was fairly different from what I've read in the past -- I'm always interested in reading a fresh, new style.
Grade: A
Other Books by This Author: Hacking Harvard.
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