In this far future dystopia where the earth was nearly destroyed because of a nuclear war centered in the Middle East, technology has progressed to such a level/degree that it was used to heal the earth from the near destruction of the war. The moon and stars are no longer visible but that is a small price to pay for all the technological advances some people enjoy. Babies are created using genetic modification and with enough credit parents can select for every possible physical and intellectual attribute they want, so Lea Kahn and her sister Zoie are perfect. Lea, beautiful and perfect, had a horrible car accident that would have killed her if not for the modern, medical technology that saved her. After the accident, Lea’s parents save her by having her brain removed from her broken body, sliced up, and uploaded into a new synthetic body. This takes the coming of age question—who am I—and twists it into something horribly new for Lea. What she has become, people call mech heads or skinners and while she has all of her memories of her life before the accident, she has no connection to the body she was given. Lea struggles to negotiate a new life as her old friends including her boyfriend reject her. Fans of Feed and the Adoration of Jenna Fox will enjoy this gripping and chilling novel, the first of a trilogy. ( )

I gave this book 3 stars in hope of things to come in the sequel; it was difficult to choose between 3 and 4 stars.

There were some aspects of this book I loved, and some I felt were slow or unecessary, hence the torn rating.

Lia Kahn is dead...at least in most ways. Her body is gone, destroyed in a fiery car crash that left no part of her intact. But her brain survives, downloaded into a perfect mechanical body that never ages, never dies, never goes wrong. But it also never feels.

Caught in a brilliant intense internal struggle for the essence of who she still is, Lia fights to regain her old life, only to find that everyone has closed the gaps in order to exclude the machine they believe she has become. Prejudice, darkness, disillusionment, pain. This book is heavy stuff, but the issues it addresses are great. What exactly is it that divides human from computer? When and if the future brings this sort of technology to us, what will be the ethical consequences? And is Lia really still Lia...or does your identity disappear when your life does?

I had some issues with Lia's character; I don't expect to like all characters of all books, but there were times I really wanted to slap the girl. I understood that her situation was difficult and she was trying to deal with it, but she was downright cruel, shallow, and nasty sometimes. However, she was always honest about it, and I give her credit for that. That said, I hated Jude and the weird mechs, smug morons like that always wear my teeth down through constant grinding in fury. And I loved Auden; it was hard not to. Sweet guys like him are my weakness, and I loved his and Lia's relationship and hope we see more of him in the sequel.

All in all, a decent book that could have done with some shaving out of Lia's angsting, but it looks like it's leading into interesting territory. ( )

Something different. Robots and what not.
Something I fear for our future.
I defiantly wouldn't welcome mechs with open arms. ( )

Skinned was one of the first reviews I posted on my blog, back in early, early days (this review is from 2012). I remember being impressed by the philosophical conversation behind this book, and while I do try not to duplicate reviews, I still think this books interesting and relevant, even eight years after my initial reading.

So Skinned tells the story of Lia Khan. Lia is dead. Lia is alive. That’s the paradox makes up conflict in this book as Lia learns to navigate the world in her postmortem existence. This isn’t much of a spoiler, since this is the premise of the book itself, but in the first pages of Skinned, Lia dies. The beginning of the book is about Lia booting on – her brain has been sliced and micro-scanned and approved for transplant into a machine to preserve her after death. As a minor, Lia has no say in the process and since her death was unexpected, she doesn’t get a custom model – she is uploaded into a base model that barely resembles her.

That’s the premise of Skinned. Lia’s own reactions and those of the people around her are what follow. Is she a miracle or abomination? Can she pick up her life where she left it? She faces what it is like to have a human mind and emotions but not be organic. And are her memories true, or are they computer programming? … There’s a lot to unpack here and I find it absolutely fascinating and wholeheartedly recommend it. Dystopias come in many shapes and sizes, but a lot of them are about government upheaval. I find dystopian futures that discuss philosophical concepts so interesting. What does it mean to be alive? Where is the moral line of creating life?

The characters themselves are okay. Because I’ve read the whole trilogy before, I know they get better, but in this first book Lia, Zo, Jude, and Austen are all a bit flat. Jude and Austen, two different ends of the spectrum, serve to push Lia and grow her character… and Lia is flat because she is discovering herself and unwinding the threads between who she was and who she is. And Zoie, who comes off as a minor character, just begins to develop in the last pages of Skinned. My memory is that Zo is a character to watch, so I’m looking forward to rediscovering her. For most of the book, it is difficult to relate to anyone, so if the the plot and world don’t interest you, the characters could be a deal breaker. That said, I promise they get better.

My investment in Skinned is very much related to the story it’s telling and the world it’s in. Technological advancement interests me… and isn’t this concept fascinating? The idea that our brains could be scanned and the elements that make us tick uploaded into a computer? So I’ll be continuing the series, and if you enjoy dystopias, I really recommend this one. It’s a unique story and yes, it starts small… but it will grow.

As a note, this series has been rebranded and I have the original books. The rebranded title for Skinned in the Cold Awakenings trilogy is Frozen.

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Original Review: 4 stars

This book has just enough dystopia in it to get me excited. Lia Kahn is not a likable protagonist. She is that stereotypical popular bitch that is too pretty, too rich, too perfect. Until she got into a life-changing car accident that killed her body and her memories have been downloaded into an android - her parents' last futile hope of saving their daughter. The idea is brilliance. I even relatively enjoyed the writing style.

What I didn't enjoy was the preachiness. All dystopia books have a level of preachiness; it comes with the territory. There are, however, different ways to execute it. Wasserman chooses to execute her "lesson learned" through Lia's conversations with Auden, a generally nice guy who protects Lia when nobody else will. These conversations seem to encompass the entirety of Lia and Auden's relationship for the first half of the book, then his character appears to complete change after a couple of events that have led him to despise everything that Lia is. Although ultimately at the end, Lia discovers the truth in Wasserman's message, she also has to be told it several times y several people in what feels like otherwise useless ways.

I think this is a shame because Wasserman has a brilliant idea here, and she opens an excellent discussion about what makes humans truly alive. I am hoping that Crashed and Wired deliver a little more in the way of an interesting plotline and less shoving-a-message-down-the-reader's-throat. Despite my gripes, though, these thoughts came after I finished the book - while I was reading it, I enjoyed it immensely. ( )

Okay, but certainly not as good as "The adoration of Jenna Fox." ( )