“I stare into the mirror. The girl’s eyes are frozen with shock, her mouth a perfect circle of horror. Her face contorts as a strangled scream fills the room.”
-Paula Rawsthorne, Shell
Hi everyone! Not too long ago I was surprised with a copy of Shell by Paula Rawsthorne from the lovely people at Scholastic, (thank you!) it came out a few days ago in the UK and I binge read the entire thing a few days ago.
Check out the blurb:
What if you thought you had died, only to wake up to find that your brain and eyes had been transplanted into someone else’s body?
When Lucy, a teen diagnosed with terminal cancer, wakes up cancer-free, it should be a dream come true. But faced with a life she didn’t choose and trapped in a new body, Lucy must face the biggest question of all…
How far would you go to save the one you love?
So this one majorly creeped me out. With a modern Frankensteinian theme going on, Shell addresses questions of ethics, mortality, religion, and what it means to be you. Despite the heavy subject matter, the book was written more simply and was very easy reading, as well as being a fast read at 362 pages. (UK ARC edition) The shorter chapters and the fast-paced plot add to this, propelling the action along at speed and keeping you gripped.
There are some extremely emotional parts in this book, so be warned of that! It does deal with death and surgery and terminal cancer, so trigger warnings for those. One of the things I loved about it was how important Lucy’s best friend, Mak, was to her. There wasn’t any romance in this book, instead Lucy is focused on finding a way to reach her best friend and her grandmother, and those are the most important relationships in her life to her, which was refreshing to read and sweet. I like reading books about strong female friendships that feel more realistic and this was a good one for that.
I also really liked how morally ambiguous most of the characters were at one point or another, especially Lucy’s parents. They have been faced with a horribly difficult situation and the book does a great job at not looking at it in black and white terms. There were more twists than I expected, with a slight bit of a mystery to it as well.
I really felt for Lucy’s character and her ups and downs and feelings about being in someone else’s body were written as realistically as I felt they could be, one of the reasons this book managed to effectively creep me out!
Overall, I ended up binge reading this book in almost one sitting and found it an intriguing, thought-provoking read. If you’re a fan of YA contemporaries that deal with tougher subject areas, then I’d recommend this one to you! I’m giving it 4/5 stars.
Thanks for reading everyone!
Has anyone got this one on their TBRs? Or read it already? What did you think of it? Which books have you read lately that have creeped you out?
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