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In the Skin of a Monster

door Kathryn Barker

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525491,984 (3.14)1
Caught in a dreamscape, mistaken for a killer ... will Alice find a way home?.. Three years ago, Alice's identical twin sister took a gun to school and killed seven innocent kids; now Alice wears the same face as a monster. She's struggling with her identity, and with life in the small Australian town where everyone was touched by the tragedy. Just as Alice thinks things can't get much worse, she encounters her sister on a deserted highway. But all is not what it seems, and Alice soon discovers that she has stepped into a different reality, a dream world, where she's trapped with the nightmares of everyone in the community. Here Alice is forced to confront the true impact of everything that happened the day her twin sister took a gun to school ... and to reveal her own secret to the boy who hates her most.… (meer)
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Toon 5 van 5
Probably 3.5 stars. I'm conflicted about this book. The book was easy to read and the story starts out just like the blurb, but then .... Whoa what just happened?! I can't say more without giving the twist away. I don't think the characters will stay with me for long, but I didn't dislike them and they spoke with genuine voices. Hmmm... ( )
  Kateinoz | Feb 14, 2023 |
Actual rating - 3.5 stars

I'll probably re-read it at some point, but overall I have mixed feelings about it.

It's haunting and beautiful.
Exploration of human psychology with otherworldly twist thrown in.
It also pulled at me but - which is horrendously important - only when Alice was talking in a sort of diary form.
Confusing? Not for you alone. Let me elaborate.

The World - Points for the nightmare dreamscape as a parallel alternative reality. It strangely echoes some of my thoughts on these matters. In short - fascinating.

The Characters - Interesting?
Ivan is my favourite, in all honesty.
I did not particularly care for either Alice or Lux.
Lux has my sympathies for being immortal. And the heavy load. Ouch. Poor guy.
Alice is ... difficult for me to place. There is no dislike, just ... disconnect? I liked her thinking voice. Rather interesting head to live in, for a while at least.
Other characters are there, but did not make any particular impression on me? I mean they exist but don't really register?

Overall, an interesting concept and non-preachy exploration of humanity.
This book is for select audience, I think.
Unfortunately, I have not connected to the story as much as I expected to.

FINAL VERDICT: Give it a try? Just keep in mind it has two POVs and is not, strictly, a contemporary. As one reviewer put it: "a more genre-defying, drums-along-to-it’s-own-beat kind of book" ( )
  QuirkyCat_13 | Jun 20, 2022 |
I was definitely intrigued by the synopsis of this particular book. What if your identical twin sister went on a shooting rampage? How would you be affected? Those around you would see her rather than you each time they looked at you, but how would you then feel about yourself.

When this story opens Alice is disconnected from all around her to the extent her routine is that she "pretends to go to school" while her father "pretends to be asleep until she's left for the day". She (as well as the rest of the town) is still to even start dealing with the events of three years prior. By the end of the book I wouldn't say that Alice has come to an understanding, but she has progressed to the extent that she's able to start assisting other's of ithe townspeople to start to express what they are feeling rather than bottling it up only for it to come out in dreams.

That's actually one of the more interesting concepts about this particular book. The dreamscape in which Alice gets transported to / trapped within is dynamic. Each night reflections of the dreams of the residents are formed and sometimes, the people and items within become trapped in the dream. It is in this environment and in the light of what she comes across that Alice is able to start understanding that just as there was more to her sister, there was more to her as well.

And I can't neglect to mention the other narrator in this particular tale. This book is written in the first person alternating between Alice and Lux (a long-term deweller in the dreamscape). The gradual unfolding of who Lux had been in the "real world" weaves through the tale and by seeing events from his POV we get a bit of a balance.

I'm going to be gifting this to my 12 yo niece. ( )
  Damiella | Aug 18, 2020 |
In the Skin of a Monster by Kathryn Barker was this year's YA Aurealis Award-winning novel, which is the main reason I picked it up. It also helped that I happened to see it at the library, otherwise it probably would've remained on my "meaning to get around to reading" list for a while longer.

In the Skin of a Monster was not quite the book I thought it would be. From the blurb (and the opening) we learn that Alice's twin sister took a gun to school, three years ago, and killed a bunch of kids. I thought the story would be about Alice coming to terms with the fact that she looks like her sister and that other people see her sister when they look at her. That stuff was in the book, but it was the backstory, not the main plot.

The plot was about Alice being transported to a world of dreams and nightmares, literally, where she encounters dreamt up versions of people she knows or knew in the real world and has to avoid being killed by various nightmare versions. The story is told in alternating chapters from Alice's point of view and Lux's, one of the people who's always lived in the dream/nightmare world. When the story first switched to Lux's perspective, I was a bit thrown because I hadn't been expecting it and because I didn't understand where it was going. As I read more, though, things fell into place and I realised what kind of story this really was.

Barker uses the nightmare/dream world to interesting effect, showing us — through the informative filter of Alice — all the different versions of the twin with the gun that people have been dreaming about (including, for example, the two movie versions who look nothing like her).

Alice's sections are told in second person, as if she's speaking to her twin while relating the events of the story. This, combined with how the other characters talk to Alice (and the fact that no one in the dream/nightmare world knows anyones real names), has the effect of never telling the reader the name of the twin and adding to the, well, unspeakable-ness of what she did.

I enjoyed reading In the Skin of the Monster, especially once I got a proper feel for what sort of book it is. I would classify it as horror — not thriller, which is sort of what the school shooting aspect initially suggested to me — but its not so horrific as to be unsuitable for its YA audience. Also, Barker does a surprisingly good job of taking an event we might associate as more of an USian occurrence and making it work as the background for a story with a very Australian setting. I would recommend this book to fans of YA fantasy and horror. It was not difficult to read but, as you can probably guess from the subject matter, it wasn't what I would call a cheerful read. That said, it also could have been much darker than it was. I can see why it won the Aurealis Award.

4.5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. ( )
  Tsana | May 13, 2016 |
Interesting one. I persevered even though it was nothing like I expected the book to be.
Alice is the twin sister of a girl who went on a shooting rampage at a small outback town school 3 years ago; killing 7 students and then herself.
The effect on Alice was that she has been hospitalised for much of the 3 years and now is back looking like everyone’s worst nightmare.
To pass the day, Alice wanders out of town counting her steps ….it is when she reaches the border of the town that she encounters a version of herself. She touches the version and suddenly finds herself in a nightmare (literally) world.
Told from alternating chapters – Alice and a strange immortal called Lux, this book was so weird!
Basically it is a take on the dreamtime myth and the town ( called Collector) is a place where the dream world and the real world intercept. Alice’s entries deal with her feelings towards her sister and what she did and the guilt that she didn’t stop her.
Lux’s entries are more complex in that he is accompanied everywhere by a monster called Ivan, who believes that Lux is part of a great prophecy.
This is Barker’s first book and some of the symbolism is a bit overdone…..Lux = light/hope and therefore is a good name for an angel. Alice = Alice in Wonderland…D’oh! Kell = Kill.





. ( )
  nicsreads | Nov 8, 2015 |
Toon 5 van 5
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Caught in a dreamscape, mistaken for a killer ... will Alice find a way home?.. Three years ago, Alice's identical twin sister took a gun to school and killed seven innocent kids; now Alice wears the same face as a monster. She's struggling with her identity, and with life in the small Australian town where everyone was touched by the tragedy. Just as Alice thinks things can't get much worse, she encounters her sister on a deserted highway. But all is not what it seems, and Alice soon discovers that she has stepped into a different reality, a dream world, where she's trapped with the nightmares of everyone in the community. Here Alice is forced to confront the true impact of everything that happened the day her twin sister took a gun to school ... and to reveal her own secret to the boy who hates her most.

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