Such Lovely Skin

Author: Tatiana Schlote-Bonne

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Such Lovely Skin by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
kinda corny in a blumhouse kinda way. rating based on enjoyment and not on quality necessarily
View all my reviews

Summary

An evil video game
A lying Twitch streamer
A demon hungry for her secrets

After spending the summer wracked with guilt about causing the accident that killed her little sister, ambitious gamer and chronic liar Viv returns to Twitch streaming. She never told her parents the truth about the accident, but she hopes that maybe making it big in streaming and giving the money to them is penance enough for her mistakes.

The weekend before school starts, Viv finds the perfect horror game to make her Twitch comeback, and during an offline practice run, an NPC asks Viv for a secret. She decides to tell them the truth about her sister’s death since a game could never share her secret―in doing so, she accidentally welcomes a demonic mimic into her life.

No one believes Viv when she tells them about her evil doppelganger. Viv has lied to get her best friend’s sympathy and has spread rumors for attention, so why should anyone trust her now? The only person who believes her is Ash, a cute social outcast whom Viv once bullied. In trying to clear her name and kill the mimic, Viv discovers that her lies have hurt people who never deserved it, herself included.

via goodreads

My Thoughts

Although this text ended up being young adult, which is something that must have caused me to avoid it sooner, I ended up really enjoying it. It deals with themes that I think are interesting in complex ways; specifically that one is not a bad person even if they do bad things, which feels like a simple message, but especially in a ya novel where a teenager may see in black and white, it is a helpful message.

Quotes

“And I think we should take the desktop too,” Dad adds. “No more games. No social life.” i think this is a bad reaction from the parents: there is clearly something wrong with her,,, even if it is not her and further isolating her after a summer of isolation seems like a bad move... i know this is not unrealistic to how parents might act in this situation, but i think they should at least take into consideration and memory that she has practically been isolated all summer and she still "did" this
"But it’s not me. It’s someone who looks exactly like me." v similar to persona, but a different variation. i think this and persona are siblings but this is lowkey what i wanted from persona
"targeted by a demon that takes your form. A doppelgänger." “Doppelgängers typically move on from their victims when they’ve achieved what they want, most likely your insanity or death. So you’ll want to kill it before it kills you,”
"I jolt when I see myself on-screen. A bruise is forming on my nose, the bridge swollen, nostrils clogged with tissue. My hair is still all frizzed out everywhere. Definitely going to need a good flat ironing and makeup session before we go live." the conception of coming back different, but there is trauma often done to the original by the doppleganger..
“But I remember what it was like to be your age, and if I’d made the same mistake, I might’ve lied about it too.” now the parents can be reflective of grief and trauma and being a teenager? not before when she was "acting out" hypothetically? maybe there was character growth that we did not see but some blumhouse ass tying up
"unburdened"

Links & Status

my goodreads review
status: 3. sprout

Notes

i will take notes here as I go through the text to help me gather my thoughts a little and to practice note taking. As I begin I want to think about the way I have consumed multimedia texts a lot this year specifically with the october film haunt and UH insert book name here. The one that promised to be dark webby but was really about body doubling. I wish I had taken notes on that one that would have a lot to say for themes I like.

Potentially discussion on doubling which may be interesting to unpack
perhaps the idea of doubling post trauma is not so much a new take but rather a take that is new to me. need to sort through annie labarge's 4. sources/books/Dog Days further
untrustworthy and guilty narrator
there are connections between trauma and grief and guilt
i cant tell if this is unsubtle writing intentionally or not: is the reader supposed to be aware that this video game has stolen viv's skin, or are we supposed to be as curious as viv is
i think about itch-- that kept us in the dark about what was happening entirely until the end, but at the end of itch i felt stupid because there was no way to guess what was happening. this feels different? like i have somewhat of an idea about whats going on here but not specifically, and i guess i am curious to find out whats happening
shes so stupid!! like something v scary is happening and shes like "okay lemme stream "
is this ya? I discovered far too late that this is ya lmao, which explains why it is written like that
"compulsion" mention lmao but the parents and adults in this world are so dumb
its a metaphorrr for grief and guilttt which no duh but, its clear that holding a secret like this is "haunting" her not unlike a demon
i still dont know who this is written for?

status - 4. evergreen