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A review by rowingrabbit
Under Your Skin by Sabine Durrant
2.0
From the outside, one would think Gaby Mortimer had the perfect life. A successful, handsome husband, an adorable daughter, glamorous career as cohost on a morning show & a beautiful home in an affluent part of London. They'd be wrong.
The house is great & Millie is a sweetie. But Gaby & Philip are not the people they used to be & have drifted apart. And at work, Gaby has the feeling they are planning on trading her in for a younger model. She does her best to keep up the facade in both places but the stress is getting to her.
Things really start to unravel when she stumbles over the body of a young woman while running in the park. Before she knows it, she's the prime suspect. DI Perivale seems to have it in for her. Incessant questioning & a night in jail lead to her bosses suggesting she take a few days off...TV speak for "you're fired". And don't even start on the throng of press camped on her front lawn. All while Philip is attending meetings in Singapore.
There are peripheral characters that flesh out the story, notably her BFF Clara, a determined journalist named Jack & Marta, the nanny.
The novel has a good premise. The problem is how long it takes before you really get invested in the characters & start to pay attention. It's almost as if a different author wrote the last third, by far the best part of this book.
Initially, I found Gaby a difficult person to like. She comes across as brittle, flighty & fake. I know she's desperately trying to hold on to her life but her personality & behaviour make it hard to feel any sympathy for her & you really need to for the story to work. Philip is depicted as absent & self centred, a bland & pretentious kind of guy. It's only in the final pages that they become interesting & more three dimensional.
The plot itself is promising but you have to care about the characters or find them compelling to get into a book, preferably early on. Much of the dialogue is initially superficial & a tighter edit on Gaby's endless streams of consciousness would have helped. I know other reviewers have mentioned the way DI Perivale was depicted. I didn't have an issue with his character but PC Morrow comes across as a giggly schoolgirl spouting all kinds of nonsense. A more realistic characterization would have added some much needed weight to the story, particularly in the beginning.
As with all books, it's a matter of taste. If you've read something by this author before & enjoyed their writing style, no doubt you'll like this as well.
The house is great & Millie is a sweetie. But Gaby & Philip are not the people they used to be & have drifted apart. And at work, Gaby has the feeling they are planning on trading her in for a younger model. She does her best to keep up the facade in both places but the stress is getting to her.
Things really start to unravel when she stumbles over the body of a young woman while running in the park. Before she knows it, she's the prime suspect. DI Perivale seems to have it in for her. Incessant questioning & a night in jail lead to her bosses suggesting she take a few days off...TV speak for "you're fired". And don't even start on the throng of press camped on her front lawn. All while Philip is attending meetings in Singapore.
There are peripheral characters that flesh out the story, notably her BFF Clara, a determined journalist named Jack & Marta, the nanny.
The novel has a good premise. The problem is how long it takes before you really get invested in the characters & start to pay attention. It's almost as if a different author wrote the last third, by far the best part of this book.
Initially, I found Gaby a difficult person to like. She comes across as brittle, flighty & fake. I know she's desperately trying to hold on to her life but her personality & behaviour make it hard to feel any sympathy for her & you really need to for the story to work. Philip is depicted as absent & self centred, a bland & pretentious kind of guy. It's only in the final pages that they become interesting & more three dimensional.
The plot itself is promising but you have to care about the characters or find them compelling to get into a book, preferably early on. Much of the dialogue is initially superficial & a tighter edit on Gaby's endless streams of consciousness would have helped. I know other reviewers have mentioned the way DI Perivale was depicted. I didn't have an issue with his character but PC Morrow comes across as a giggly schoolgirl spouting all kinds of nonsense. A more realistic characterization would have added some much needed weight to the story, particularly in the beginning.
As with all books, it's a matter of taste. If you've read something by this author before & enjoyed their writing style, no doubt you'll like this as well.