Skin Game – Caroline Kettlewell

Title: Skin Game
Author: Caroline Kettlewell
Paperback: 192 pages
Genre: Memoir/Non Fic
Rating: 3.76/5
My rating: 

I’m not 100% sure how I feel about this book. On one hand, it’s a memoir, you can’t say that one persons opinion or translation of their own life is wrong. However, I had a few issues with this.

Firstly, the writing style. At times I found the sentences too long, broken up by comma upon comma. These sentences didn’t read very well and sometimes I feel there was more commas than necessary in a sentence. Some of the language used didn’t add up with the feeling of what was being told and the flow just didn’t work very well for me. I nearly DNR’d this book.

Next, I agree with some of the things she said. In fact, I tabbed 10 quotes in this book. However, some of the things she said I didn’t agree with. As someone with experience, I don’t feel everything quite matched up. But like I said, everyone has their own individual experiences.

This wasn’t exactly what I expected. It was more a story of her life with a few mentions of specific situations where she had self-harmed or done something similar. I don’t really know what I was expecting from this book, but I expected a bit more as to her exact feelings when she was self-harming, why she did it, her feelings after, etc. I feel like it played just a background part in her telling her story. Saying that, that’s a good thing for the author. She shouldn’t be focusing on self-harm as something that defines her, as it shouldn’t be. However, the title of the book kind of misled me as to what would actually be contained inside.

I’m not sure this is something I would look back on and re-read. I also wouldn’t recommend it. There are several points where she gets quite triggering with her language (but again, describing actions and not emotions) and I don’t feel this would benefit anyone to read. I didn’t really take anything from this book. The quotes I tabbed weren’t exactly positive ones, they were just things I agreed with or resonated with.

When she speaks of medication, I almost felt as if she was saying it was the only way to recovery. Obviously this isn’t true, and this might not be what she meant but I feel like as soon as she took it, life went from 0-100 pretty quick.

Like I said, it’s all personal experience but these are just a few grievances I had. I don’t regret reading the book, I do like to see other people’s opinions and thoughts on these things. However, if it was any longer, I probably would have DNR’d it.

Love & Laughter

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