A review by jentang
Mysterious Skin by Scott Heim

2.75

The one thing I didn't expect to feel from this book was an uncanny connection with Brian over our remarkably similar childhood "UFO" experiences. Unfortunately, this was one of the only positive things I felt the entire latter half of the read. (Perhaps I am just riding on that aforementioned nutcase connection here, but I thought the book was fine, and even quite engaging, up until Brian and Neil reached adolescence) The writing in this wasn't bad at all; while I would hesitate to call it immersive in any way, it had a languid flow that made reading honestly pleasant. This was counteracted nicely by the tension being drummed up in Neil's parts - before his storyline was soured by an irritating emphasis on how edgy and rebellious he became into his teen years and beyond. I understand the purpose of this choice, but the effects of molestation could have been displayed in a much more tasteful manner, as crude as that sounds. The unnecessary dips into things like the genuinely awful and irrelevant snippets of poetry Neil's friend wrote not only made me question whether or not I really did have a legitimate paperback in my hands in place of a computer with a compilation of TikTok comment section writing open; they also took away from space that could have been better utilized for actual plot development, the lack of which made the entire premise of the book's storyline - which started off quite interesting - unreasonable and nonsensical. I am quite inexplicably mad at myself for reading this all the way through.