8 July 2015

Blog Tour: Under My Skin by Zoë Markham

What’s it all about?

Chloe was once a normal girl. Until the night of the car crash that nearly claimed her life. Now Chloe’s mother is dead, her father is a shell of the man he used to be and the secrets that had so carefully kept their family together are falling apart.

A new start is all Chloe and her father can hope for, but when you think you’re no longer human how can you ever start pretending?

A contemporary reworking of a British horror classic, Under My Skin follows seventeen-year-old Chloe into an isolated world of darkness and pain, as she struggles to understand what it really means to be alive. 

Set against the familiar backdrop of everyday, normal teenage worries, Chloe's world has become anything but...


What if we're all monsters, on the inside?
A contemporary reworking of a British horror classic?

Yep, this here book puts a modern YA twist on Mary Shelley’s Gothic/Romantic/Sci-Fi classic, Frankenstein. Markham references her Gothic predecessors by having Chlo spend the first few chapters working her way through such tomes as The Monk and The Mysteries of Udolpho whilst hiding out in the attic (where all mad, bad and dangerous to know Gothic women hang out!)

Initially, there seems to be a good deal of similarities between Chloe and ‘the creature’, and her father and Victor Frankenstein: the former two characters are young and inexperienced reanimated corpses who act on impulse, have some daddy issues and ultimately just want to be accepted and find love. As for the latter, well they’re both ambitious and gifted scientists who start out with good intentions but end up getting in way out of their depth, losing their morals and those they love most in the process.

Like Frankenstein’s creature, Chlo bears “ a hell within [her]” and begs and pleads with her father to allow her some contact with the outside world to ease her suffering: “You can't keep me locked up forever. It doesn’t make it all just go away. It just traps it all in with me”. Where they differ is in the circumstances surrounding their creations. Horror fans will know that Frankenstein's creature was assembled out of various bits of corpses: from executed criminals, to bodies snatched from graves, to large animals (apparently Victor couldn’t be bothered with sewing up lots of little fiddly human bits, so that’s why he ended up with a super-strong eight-feet-tall abomination). This creature didn't know of his own hideousness until he experienced rejection, fear and violence from the people he encountered and also frightened himself on recognising his reflection, in a pool of water, for the first time. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but I can't help feeling that poor old Chlo has got it worse… She’s a 17-year-old girl, grieving for her mum and the life she’s had to leave behind who describes herself as “A sick perversion. A fallen, failed weapon. Created by evil, for evil”.

Another notable difference is that her father, however misguided, works tirelessly to improve the quality of Chlo’s life, unlike V.F, who flees from his creation and swoons the moment it opens it’s watery yellow eye. One never quite sympathises with Chloe’s dad though, as he does seem to maintain the most undesirable quality of his original counterpart – his total refusal to accept responsibility for his actions: “He sounds whiny now, as if it's everyone’s fault but his. As if the universe has dumped a great big pile of ‘unfair’ right into his lap”. Overall, despite this douchey self-pitying, the fact that Chlo’s dad works around the clock to recreate the compounds necessary to keep her alive, buys her copious amounts of take out food and make-up, stumps up for her to go to an elite boarding school and – shock horror – actually wants what is best for her, does reduce Chloe’s status as an outsider. That and the friends she makes at school (however fleetingly). Oh, and the boy.

There’s a boy?
Daz, short for Daniel (who knew?) has it all: great smile, fit body, kind, funny and hot. Like literally hot, which is great when you’re an undead chick who feels the cold more than most! The love interest in this story is really where it departs from the source material, but definitely makes for some engaging YA reading. 

Is it any good?
Definitely. As you’ve probably realised if you’ve made it this far, I like me some Frankenstein, so I was very interested to see how it translated to modern YA. As it turns out, I wouldn't really say this is a ‘reworking’ of the original, but it does definitely draw a lot of inspiration from it and makes the reader question what it is to be human, as well as the nature of good and evil. Markham’s writing is good, and I really enjoyed the voice she created for Chlo; despite its fairly dark content, the novel remains a light and enjoyable read due to the youthful, sometimes funny, sometimes snarky narration.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

What to read next?
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, obviously!
Dead Romantic by C J Skuse
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (Chlo reads this several times, and it's the one book she takes on the run with her).

About Zoe Markham

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Zoë writes Young Adult fiction, blending dark twistiness with urban Britishness to produce unique, unsettling tales. 

A full-time editor by day, Zoë writes by night, fueled by endless mugs of tea and an increasingly blurred distinction between fantasy & reality.

Zoë lives in the wilds of West Oxfordshire with her husband, son, and the obligatory two cats. 


Links: Twitter | Facebook | Website


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