Review for Someone Else's Skin by Sarah Hilary

When I first heard about this book, I wasn’t sure if it would be my kind of read. Crime/detective stories have a great following, but I have always preferred Stephen King to James Patterson.
At the time, my sister, Jaye was writing her first book ‘The Ninth Life’and it was supposed to be a mystery with more than a hint of the supernatural about it. Just the kind of book I love to read.But the characters she found in her head had other ideas, and before she knew what was happening, one of them had turned into a violent and demented serial killer.
‘The Ninth Life’ is published now, and I enjoyed reading it, and that was when I knew I had to read Sarah Hilary’s book.
Someone Else’s Skin is brilliantly relentless and overpowering, moving so fast it leaves you breathless. Almost too painful at times to actually read, this is a fictional mastery of a very different kind. We all know that life isn’t all sweetness and light, and some of us know exactly how bad it can be. Human beings can be weak and cruel, cunning and heartless, and that most of the time nothing is fair, not even close.
The heroine in Someone Else’s Skin, detective Inspector Marnie Rome, has more reason than most to try and put the world to rights for she has her own demons to fight, and sometimes they get in the way of her day job. Her world is terrifyingly real and shockingly honest, so much so that at times you find yourself begging her to get it right.
Raw, unspoken horror lurks between the pages of this book. But if you look harder, if something in your own life makes you look harder, there are grains of truth behind the suffering. It is possible that Sarah Hilary knows something of which she writes, maybe more than something, as there is far too much honesty peeking out at you. The pain so finely wrought.If it does nothing else, this book will make you wonder about the people who do these terrible jobs. What kind of people were they, before they began and what kind of person did it eventually make them? Violence tends to stain everything, it doesn’t need to touch you physically, but in the end it will destroy you if you’re not careful.
This book is by far a better story than most of the ones I have read, and I cannot wait for the sequel, No Other Darkness …




Bad Moon, one of my most neglected novels, is receiving good reviews on FanStory.com this week and I am delighted. Kindle copies are only £2.44 on Amazon at the moment. Click on the cover at the side of this post and check it out!