emma's Reviews > This Skin Was Once Mine and Other Disturbances

i was actually scared to read this.

and i should've been. but for other reasons.

i enjoyed — although maybe enjoyed is the wrong word — this author's first book, because while it didn't have much going on besides shock value and gore it at least did those two things in kind of an interesting way.

reading this was completely unpleasant from start to finish, and not because of the gross-out content. the writing is actively bad, full of clichés and adjectives, and somehow even though all of these stories (?) are very short, they drag on, not ending at the moment they'd be effective or shocking. characterizations are inconsistent, and in fact characters seem almost beside the point — none of these figures feel comprehensible, let alone human or real.

there's repetition here of whole details or lines of dialogue. favorite words are used to the in point of incomprehension — play a drinking game with covet, sense, decidedly, merely, perhaps with 911 on speed dial. this is teeming with repeated images (we get it, wounds have lips), adverbs, em dash breaks for more synonyms and more adverbs.

it's overwritten to the point that words have no meaning, which makes for a wildly frustrating read.

terrifying.

bottom line: i was anticipating this as a book that would make me truly scared, and i am: for the future of publishing.

(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)