Winner of the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award and Nominated for a Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel
No two victims are alike.
DI Marnie Rome knows this better than most. Five years ago, her family home was the scene of a shocking and bloody crime that left her parents dead and her foster brother in prison. Marnie doesn’t talk much about her personal life, preferring to focus on work. Not even her partner, DS Noah Jake, knows much about Marnie’s past. Though as one of the few gay officers on the force and half Jamaican to boot, Noah’s not one to overshare about his private life either. Now Marnie and Noah are tackling a case of domestic violence, and a different brand of victim.
Hope Proctor stabbed her husband in desperate self-defense. A crowd of witnesses in the domestic violence shelter where she’s staying saw it happen, but none of them are telling quite the same story, and the simple question remains: how did Leo Proctor get in to the secure shelter? Marnie and Noah shouldn’t even have been there when it happened but they were interviewing another resident, Ayana Mirza. They’re trying to get Ayana to testify against her brothers for pouring bleach on her face for bringing dishonor the family, and blinding her in one eye. But Ayana knows that her brothers are looking for her, and she has no doubt that they’ll kill her this time.
As the violence spirals, engulfing the residents of the women's shelter, Marnie finds herself drawn into familiar territory: A place where the past casts long shadows and she must tread carefully to survive.
Ok, another book to add to my own personal reading this year. I bought this book for my birthday and have not been able to read. I cracked open my kindle and this book did not let me go! Jesus what a ride! Someone Else’s Skin is a harrowing, thriller about abuse. This book needs to come with a warning, a warning that you will spend a lot of your time holding your breath, that you will be on edge, that despite the ending you have zero relief and that after you really need something fluffy to read. I mean just wow!
This introduction to Marnie Rome and Noah Jake is blinking brilliant. Marnie has a hard past, a past that she can’t decide whether to embrace or destroy. She throws herself into her work as it’s the only way she can cope and on doing so forgets to let people in. Noah, man I love Noah, he is Marnie’s partner, he is Jamaican and he is gay and he is badass. He has to deal with rubbish from Carling another officer in the team, Carling who thinks he is such a macho man he misses glaringly obvious clues when faced with them.
The book is split into two parts. Part 1, you have the build-up to Hope Proctor, the victim, in a woman refuge who has stabbed her husband when he somehow got into the refuge. Ayana, a woman on the run from her family suspects something is wrong with the stabbing that took place, and then she goes missing. Then Hope goes missing with Simone another woman in the refuge. What is going on?!
Part 2 and it all goes bat shit crazy! When you have a reveal and I suspected it was coming, still rocked me. Although I suspected it, I still didn’t think it would happen! Wow! Now I am on edge, now I don’t know what to think and now I am scared for Rome and Jake!
I finally have survived the book, I am now left needing the second book straight away. I am left with an open ending but I also need to read something light and fluffy to get rid of some of that darkness that got under my skin. It is a terrific book but it’s dark and harrowing and messed up! I know I’ve read it now but it’s going down for my 2020 book contender for sure! I need to get more of Marnie in my life, I need more of her story. I need more Noah. I need more answers!!!!!!
I can’t believe I haven’t read this one before and that it’s taken me so long to get there. But I am here now and I’m carrying on my journey!
