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A review by alexbestwick
Skin Grows Over by Lucy Elizabeth Allan
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This is a perfect novella. It's everything I think horror can be.
It's full of these uncanny, familiar observations about life and loss, told with so much tension and so much palpable unsaid that it really is like this figure, hovering just to the side of every scene, so close you can feel the horror in your throat. Repressed sexuality, womanhood, what ancient and modern society thinks it is owed from the female body, what it means to be in a body are all explored in a really short book without any of it feeling out of time. It's handling of grief is vulnerable, honest, appropriately messy and perfectly paced. And the writing is the final blow that makes it all so devastatingly good.
I was reminded a bit of Ghost Wall and It Follows, but it's also it's entirely own thing.
It's full of these uncanny, familiar observations about life and loss, told with so much tension and so much palpable unsaid that it really is like this figure, hovering just to the side of every scene, so close you can feel the horror in your throat. Repressed sexuality, womanhood, what ancient and modern society thinks it is owed from the female body, what it means to be in a body are all explored in a really short book without any of it feeling out of time. It's handling of grief is vulnerable, honest, appropriately messy and perfectly paced. And the writing is the final blow that makes it all so devastatingly good.
I was reminded a bit of Ghost Wall and It Follows, but it's also it's entirely own thing.