Frozen

First Lines Fridays: November 2, 2018

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First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?

  • Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
  • Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
  • Finally… reveal the book!

First Lines:

Lia Kahn is dead.
I am Lia Kahn.
Therefore — because this is a logic problem even a dim-witted child could solve — I am dead.

Did the quote pique your interest? View this book on Goodreads!

 

March 2017 Wrap-Up

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Skinned by Robin Wasserman
(Cold Awakening, book 1)
Rating:  ★★★☆☆
Reading Dates:  February 23, 2017 – March 7, 2017
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  Quinn!
Lease Favorite Thing:  Literally everyone else in Lia’s life… (except maybe Auden)

This series was republished with new titles with ‘Skinned’ being retitled as ‘Frozen’.

I know I only gave this a 3 star rating, but that was only because I was so annoyed with how long it took Lia to finally see the truth, not because the book is bad. In fact, I really debated rating it higher because I don’t want anyone to think it’s not worth the read and it totally is.

My Posts About Skinned/Frozen

Frostblood by Elly Blake
(Frostblood Saga, book 1)
Rating:  ★★★★☆
Reading Dates:  March 8, 2017
Read Count:  1
Favorite Thing:  Elemental magic + blood magic = fucking awesome
Least Favorite Thing:  The whole “he’s always so mean, but those 5 times he was nice made me fall in love with him” trope that this book, like so many others, employs… Honestly I’m so sick of that shit.

I sped through this in a day because I had to give it back to the library, and now I have to suffer the wait for the second book!

I also love the irony of the protag being a Fireblood when it’s called ‘Frostblood’.

My Posts About Frostblood

WWW Wednesday: March 8, 2017

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Welcome to WWW Wednesday! This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at Should be Reading and revived on Taking on a World of Words. Just answer the three W’s!

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading:  Crashed/Shattered (Cold Awakening, book 2) by Robin Wasserman

I have just begun Crashed, by which I mean, I’ve just gone and gotten it off the shelf to start reading it today. So I have nothing but the summary and Skinned to base my opinions on so far.

The Goodreads summary says “Lia is forced to choose between . . . sacrificing the girl she used to be and saving the boy she used to love.”

This fills me with a certain amount of what I like to call Love Triangle Dread. But that aside, it also leaves me with the question of: Auden or Walker?
Because she did love Auden, platonically, and if you’ve read Skinned you know he could very well need her to save him. But since I read a lot of YA, I am almost positive it’s Walker that hint is about. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, pretending I believe Auden is an option is purely wishful thinking….

Did I mention I’m almost positive (based on prior YA Lit knowledge) that Jude is going to be her love interest in this one? I am not excited about that at all….

I am pretty excited to see her new Mech-life, though, a life (hopefully) uninhibited by her old one, even if it does mean reading more about Jude.

This last bit is for Krysta over at Pages Unbound who commented that “The cover for Crashed is a little creepy!” (which it is), but I wanted to let you know I totally found out why when I was reading Skinned: It’s because the Mech-heads try to make themselves look as obviously non-human as possible. Jude is described as having silver hair and silver paint streaked down his face! So it seems that creepy is their little Mech-Aesthetic™.

Recently Finished:  Skinned/Frozen (Cold Awakening, book 1) by Robin Wasserman

Overall I liked this book. It was well written and nicely allegorical over multiple types of bigotry. I also found the futuristic world it was set in pretty interesting, I hope to learn more about it in the next books.

I’ve seen people relate it to Scott Westerfeld and I’d say it’s a somewhat an apt observation. Generally I don’t like the “for fans of [author]” or “it’s like [series]” because that makes you expect something pretty specific. So to be clear, it might remind you of the ‘Uglies’ series in some ways, but it is definitely not the exact same, definitely it’s own world/story.

I did find a few things I didn’t love, but they were minor enough that those things couldn’t ruin the book for me.

I wrote a (somewhat messier than usual) review on Skinned which you can read here.

Reading Next:  Wired/Torn (Cold Awakening, book 3) by Robin Wasserman

HOPEFULLY I’ll be able to get my hands on a copy. The local library has the first two, but not the third? What kind of evil librarian shenanigans are they up to there??
But I talked to one of the lovely ladies there and they think they can get it for me pretty soon on inter-library loan from another town. I’m just hoping it happens quick enough for me to go straight from Crashed to Wired, because I hate interrupting a series.

If for some reason I have to wait longer I’ll go ahead and read one of the books off my TBR Shame List.

Review: Skinned by Robin Wasserman

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Skinned by Robin Wasserman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

To save her from dying in a horrible accident, Lia’s wealthy parents transplant her brain into a mechanical body. But now people look at her differently. Can her life ever go back to normal?

*** Note: The Skinned Trilogy was re-released with new titles and covers, renamed the Cold Awakening Trilogy. In this case, ‘Skinned’ was republished as ‘Frozen’. ***

TL;DR – This review got a bit lengthier than I intended. Short review: Book is good. Writing is solid. Worth the read. Looking forward to book two.

The writing is done well. As anyone who has read more than a page or two is aware, Lia is a fairly self-centered protagonist. She doesn’t pick up on much to do with the people around her. However, Wasserman manages to write in such a way as to make obvious to the reader what is going on with the people in Lia’s life, while also making it completely clear that Lia remains clueless. This is often done through the way a character says something to Lia or when she makes an off-hand comment about something.

I’ve read novels where the reader needed to know what was really going on while the protagonist remained oblivious, but it’s not often that I see it done so well as in Skinned.

The entire book was pretty allegorical where bigotry was concerned, and I love that. We see the way religion can be used to “excuse” hatred of those who are different, along with strong allusions to racism (some overt, some not). My favorite thing is the dehumanization that goes along with bigotry is made so blatant it’s impossible to miss.

I’d also like to mention: this is a book by a Jewish woman, so if you are one of the people taking the challenge to read books by more diverse authors, you should consider this or her other books.

Lia being so self-absorbed I really wanted to hate her, but the way she is treated makes it hard. Typically, I would write off a self-centered character right away, but watching her be mistreated [start]by literally everyone she ever thought cared about her[end] made me feel for her against my will.

I will say, I felt it took way too long for Lia to take the route we all know she needed to take. [start]That is, she clung to her old life for way longer than I was willing to read about it! I couldn’t believe it was almost the end of the book before she even started considering that she ought to move on with her new life![end] While I was reading, I kept catching myself mentally complaining that she wasn’t hanging out with any Mech-heads!

Fair warning, you won’t see much character growth from Lia in this book, but I’m hoping it will come in the sequel.

I’d also just like to say, as I said before I even knew I’d be writing a review for this book: I hate Jude. I found his personality grating; he seemed like a cocky jerk. I’m fairly certain this was intentional, but it doesn’t stop it being annoying to read his scenes. [start]Who does he think he is? Mech-Jesus?[end]
I have a bad feeling the second book (Crashed/Shattered) is going to include a romance between Jude and Lia and I can already feel the annoyance about it building when I’ve yet to even open the book.

I don’t like Ho Zo one bit, either. The things she does are understandable when you look at it from her perspective [start]she felt guilty because she was supposed to be in the car, but seriously there is no reason to be a bitch all the time[end], but the girl clearly needs better coping mechanisms. Like, take a chill pill. Literally. There’s a b-mod for everything. Use that shit.

Also, and this is completely spoiler-y so don’t read it if you haven’t finished the whole book: [start]Why didn’t Lia at least attempt to get her oh-so-powerful father to make them try the Download on Auden anyway??? Like yes, I understand the requirements, but her dad can do sooo many things and has sooo much sway, and yet she doesn’t even ask him to try and save Auden??? Noooo, she just runs the fuck away! FFS LIA!

To be clear: I’m not bothered that she chose to run away. If I was her I’d have run away pretty much the second I figured out how to run! My problem is that she just ran away without even considering taking a moment to try and help the only friend she had.[end]

View all my ratings and reviews on Goodreads

“If you can’t remember something, did it really happen?”

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– Lia, Skinned by Robin Wasserman, page 201

Version:
Hardcover, 368 pages
Published September 9th 2008 by Simon Pulse

I was going to include this one in my post Some quotes from Skinned by Robin Wasserman, but I decided to post it on it’s own because I live in a constant state of “is this even real?” and this quote speaks to me so much so that I kept coming back to it even after I’d read past it in the novel.

I have extreme problems with memory and dissociative episodes to boot. This leaves me with a life I can’t, for the most part, remember at all.

And if you can’t remember something….

Some quotes from Skinned by Robin Wasserman…

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Sometimes while I’m reading I come across quotes I love so much I want to post them on their own, or maybe add them to my weekly book posts. Others, I like them enough to want to mention them, but don’t feel they are powerful enough to command their own post. These are some of that second type:

Since I was dead — or worse than dead, buried alive in a body that might as well be a coffin except it denied me the pleasure of suffocation — I figured I should be allowed to grieve.

– page 5 (The First Day)

Sascha looked torn. Should she cram my head full of newfound terror that the world would reject me, or let me wander into the big, scary out-there, like a naive lamb prancing to the slaughter?

– page 47 (Mouth Closed)

I did it all mechanically. Mechanically, as in without thought, as in through force of habit, as in instinctively, automatically, involuntarily. Mechanically, as in like-a-machine.

– page 101 (Faith)

Version:
Hardcover, 368 pages
Published September 9th 2008 by Simon Pulse

Teaser Tuesday: March 7, 2017

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When I was a kid I used to wonder if, just maybe, the world existed only for me. If rooms ceased to exist when I stepped into the hallway and people disappeared once they left me, the rest of their lives imagined solely for my entertainment.

– Robin Wasserman, Skinned (Cold Awakening, book 1), page 180

Version:
Hardcover, 368 pages
Published September 9th 2008 by Simon Pulse

Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, hosted by Ambrosia at The Purple Booker, the weekly Meme that wants you to add books to your TBR, or just share what you are currently reading. It is very easy to play along:

  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! Everyone loves Teaser Tuesday.