Review: Skinned by Robin Wasserman

Skinned
Robin Wasserman
Simon Pulse
August 4, 2009
ISBN-10: 1416974490

Some miracles come with a price . . .

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.

The first in a new trilogy.

This is one of those rare books where I love/hate the story. First of all, Lia is dead. She died in a car crash. However, her brain has been downloaded into a completely new body. She essentially cheated death and I'm one of mind that I detest knowing my mortality, and so when she started her pity party, I reached a point where I just wanted to bitchlap her and tell her that for god's sake, she should be, at least relieved, that she's still in a way, alive! Yes, things are different and they will never be the same and I understand that her previous life was perfect so that makes things harder but I can only take so much boohoowoeisme before I snap.

(This is started to sound suspiciously like a rant)

Anyway! While she certainly annoyed me at times, I loved her. I loved how she was so stubborn about keeping things the same, how she was so determined to be human. The other characters - Walker, the boyfriend, Zo, her sister, her friends Bliss and Tess, at first I didn't care much about. Let's admit it, it's all about Lia. But then as the story progress I went from indifference to full-on dislike because - and I can't say too much without spoiling the book for you - they were being so self-absorbed and some just plain bitchy. I do admit that my feelings toward to Zo changed a bit when I read about what was happening with her. Sure, she was still kind of a bitch but I felt bad for her. But there were a few others that I genuinely liked, like Auden and Jude, although I was on the fence with Jude, because well, is he a tortured character or just a psycho?

However, I certainly enjoyed the story. Ms. Wasserman has created a completely original world with captivating, so human-like (which is exceptionally funny that the most human of them all is a machine) characters that you can't help but feel for, no matter how much you don't want to care about them, believe me! Skinned is the first in a trilogy and Crashed, the second book, came out September 8th. I will certainly try to get paws on Crashed because I must know what happens next!

P.S: I was just reading my reading updates on Skinned and um, someone should have told me I sounded like a raving lunatic.