An important and innovative debut from a novelist whose career I will be excited to follow into subsequent books.

This book wasn’t bad, however I found it way longer than it needed to be.

Maybe that’s the style the author was going for but it was very repetitive.

The plot itself was really intriguing. The sacrifices that the older generations had to make for the newer ones to explore their sexuality freely and be loved differently was so beautifully done.

All the characters really had their own issues to work through, but through it all their family and their culture kept them together even if it was strained.

3/5 starts. I’d still recommend 💙

There’s something uniquely hard about finding the words to describe just how you feel about a book you loved beyond reason. Doubly hard when it’s about a book that made you a little speechless. So, I’m not sure how this review is going to go. Hopefully, coherently.

The Skin and Its Girl reads like a fairytale, about a girl born blue, about family secrets, about exile. It’s not just in its plot that it feels like this either: its prose has a magical quality to it, poetic and weightless in a way that takes your breath away at times. You know when you start a book and you instantly know it’s going to be amazing? That’s how I felt reading The Skin and Its Girl.

This is a character-driven book, first and foremost. That’s not to say things don’t happen in terms of plot, but a lot of it is about relating past events. The framing of the book is as a life recounted, Betty uncovering her great aunt’s secrets. It’s about the way her life and her great aunt’s life are intertwined, how they are in concert, and how they parallel one another.

It’s also a book that’s very much about love and loss, about family. These themes are central to the entire book — everything Nuha does comes back to this, everything she does is in defence of that love and her family, even if it’s not always appreciated. And Betty, our blue-skinned protagonist, is the beneficiary of it, which shows clearly in her narration. Love shines through every page.

I already know that this book is making it onto my favourites of 2023 list, by a fair margin. It’s probably the best book I’ve read in 2023 thus far, and it’s one that I can’t wait to get my hands on a physical copy of.

What a story. A girl born with blue skin, who was almost given away by her mother but is saved by the girl's great aunt. In many ways, that was so relatable to me. The novel is filled with gorgeous prose about family, relationships, shared stories, sexual identity, and lineage. I'm a fan of books about family sagas and how characters confront questions about their identity in relation to their family legacy. As a child of immigrant parents and battling with questions about my own identity within the bigger picture of our family saga, I can utterly relate to the main character. <I>The Skin and Its Girl<i> is a stunning debut novel.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House/Ballantine Books for the ARC.

The main character was at a crossroads in her life so she went to visit her aunt’s grave and talk with her to gain insight on a decision she must make. After reading her aunt’s notebooks and reliving the tales she heard growing up she does find clarity. I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately, it fell flat for me; I almost DNF. The writing style of this book made it difficult to keep me engaged. At times, I couldn’t tell if the timeline was in the present or the past. Additionally, there were a few words that I felt were overused; seeing them so often started to get a bit irritating. I did like the cover though, I thought it was pretty.

I enjoyed learning and reading about the Palestinian experience, LGBTQ, and multiple generations. For me, It starts out very intriguing, but I lost the thread of the story and was confused by the narrative.
Thank you Net Galley.

Felt like a memoir, I searched multiple times convinced it was real, which makes it so powerful! I didn’t feel the cover matched the emotion within this story, didn’t do it justice. Really enjoyed!

I was excited to read this book and I wanted to like it so much. But unfortunately, the book just never grabbed my attention and it felt like a slog to get through. I think I was expecting the plot to be slightly different and the writing was slower and more methodical than I anticipated. I’m sure this is a lovely book for a different reader.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.

The Skin and Its Girl is a fantastical story of a baby born with blue skin. Her mother had been set to give up the baby for adoption before her great aunt intervened. Twenty years later, the young woman is now facing a personal choice about whether to move with her lover to another country.
The story is told in the second person narrative, addressed to her great aunt Nuha, now deceased. The writing is poetic, sometimes a bit too much. “There is no truth but in old women’s tales.” The book flows between the present, Betty’s youth and the family’s history. It deals with trying to live our own life while having family obligations, of finding one’s own identity.
It’s a slow story, a dense one. I found myself alternating between highlighting beautifully written lines while skimming others.
In the end, I was engaged by Nuha’s story, but not by Betty’s, who despite her unique appearance, at times felt more like a vessel than a being.
My thanks to Netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

This book really drew me in with the plot description, and I was intrigued at first but I did not end up finishing. I think that it became confusing for me to understand what was going on, whether it was a combination of the prose or just the way different points in time were being referenced, I just found myself not fully comprehending what was going on. I wouldn't NOT recommend this book to someone, I think the story had a lot of potential, but I just don't think it was for me.

I wanted to love this book. The premise of the story is intriguing, the writing is poetic and lush, the addition of some fable-like stories from the past adds depth, but the story meanders and it is hard to follow the second-person narration. Halfway through the story I still feel as though I know very little about the blue child born so spectacularly in the opening chapter of the book - why is she blue, or better yet, what was her life like, since we skip from her birth to twenty years later, and there is so much else going on that we have lost any real connection to the main character. I’ll give it two stars, with the admission that I did not finish.

This is a well-written forage into cultures, shared histories and family relationships. Elsbeth (Betty), the main character, is born blue at birth because of an umbilical cord problem. Although her mother at first wants to give Betty up for adoption, she changes her mind and takes her home to be raised herself and Betty’s grandmother and aunt. The plot revolves around family stories, and as Betty matures, she has to figure out for herself which stories are true and which she will let shape her as a person.

I enjoyed this read, but I was definitely troubled by the second person POV, which I found off-putting. And, as beautiful as some of the passages are, the novel meanders quite a bit through various periods of time so much so that at times I was unsure what timeframe was actually being discussed.

All in all this was a good debut novel.

I really wanted to enjoy this book. The premise is so compelling and seemed like my kind of read. But I found the writing almost impenetrable. With constant perspective and time shifts, I felt perpetually confused and had to keep rereading passages to understand who or what the narrator was talking about. I haven’t worked this hard to power through a book in a long time and I ultimately never engaged with the characters or the story.

The book is okay. It does tell a story about a queer woman, who is finding some details in her family’s life through a series of her aunt’s notebooks. Also, it tells about when she was born her skin was blue. She spent her life with that skin color and dealt with family secrets.

Thanks to the publishers of the Random House Publishing Group, and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a review.

I really liked this book. I appreciated the exploration of identity and relation to family heritage. I liked the flashbacks to the past. The writing was meandering in a good way, beautiful.

If you are looking for a plot-driven novel that is an easy read, you can just pass this book by. If you love lush language, deep psychological exploration, a circuitous and slow reveal, and haunting characters, then, yes, this is your book. Employing folk tales and metaphor, and rich with history, this is a remarkable debut novel addressing questions of identity, heritage, love, and loyalty.

The Rummani family’s stories were kept by Auntie Nuha. She rescues a newborn from being given up for adoption. The infant’s mother was depressive and separated from a husband who had betrayed her. While the child was being born, the family’s abandoned soap factory oversea in Palestine was being destroyed. The legendary soap had made the family fortune. Auntie told of a blue soap that turned girls blue, giving a heritage to the new baby whose skin was indigo.

Now grown, the girl has come to her aunt’s graveside. Both women were constrained by their skin; Auntie taking on another’s identity, and the girl by the blue that set her apart. She is struggling to decide between staying with her mother or leaving with her lover. A decision that Auntie had made upon her birth, when she had planned to leave with her lover but stayed behind to care for her.

“There is no truth but in old women’s tales,” the girl is told. Auntie was full of stories. Her stories interpret life and the world: the Tower of Babel, the pursuit of an elusive silver gazelle, a boy on fire saved by a girl’s rope of long hair.

An admirable debut novel.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

I'm struggling with the writing on this one so this will be a DNF for now and I will not be reviewing it currently. I may return to it later and see if it works better for me in the future.

Elspeth “Betty” Rummani was defined by many factors growing up: her Palestinian American lineage and how history shapes a family, the complicated family relationships that fought to have a say in how she should be raised, the tall tales told as fact by her great aunt Nuha Rummani, and, least of all in the grand scheme of events leading to her communion with a tombstone, her vibrant blue skin that othered her at birth.

Betty, in her experience as an archivist, methodically retraces her own history and attempts to reconcile fact with fiction, a task challenged by Nuha’s ability to blend lies into lyrics in her stories of Rummani lineage. Returned to Aunt Nuha’s grave after decades, Betty seeks a greater understanding of self and her role as a Rummani as she faces a fork in her life’s path: leave her home country to start a new life with the woman she loves, or stay in the only home she’s ever known and remain the dependable daughter that her mother needs?

The Skin and Its Girl is a beautiful tale of how identity is simultaneously shaped by family and also marked by one’s own path into the unknown. Betty’s story marks this path as both fearsome and filled with desire. The present moment at Nuha’s grave and the narrative’s frequent departure into the past is a seamless journey that guides the reader through a range of emotions that will leave them reeling. Sarah Cypher weaves together a poetic examination of the self and the complex family dynamics that shape it in this touching novel of identity, desire, and the power in stories, especially the ones we are afraid to tell.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ability to read this wonderful book early. I highly recommend giving it a read once it’s published.

The Skin and Its Girl was a great read! It tells the story of a Palestinian immigrant family through three different generations - Betty, Tashi, her mother, and her great aunt, Nuha. Betty is born with blue skin and Nuha is convinced that it is linked to their family's prestigious history of soap-making - specifically blue soap. As Betty grows up, Nuha tells their family history and recounts stories of Palestine to her. Decades later, after Nuha's death, Betty is faced with following her partner to another country or staying and looking after her mother. She looks to Nuha's own story to determine her choice.

Sarah Cypher crafted a nuanced and beautiful novel. Their debut novel touches on themes of cultural identity, immigration, 2SLGTQIA+ representation, mental illness. Cypher examines how stories can shape us, how they can be used to build a family's legacy, and also how the storyteller can influence our perception of the truth.

The Skin and Its Girl is a book that stays with you after you've finished reading. I would absolutely recommend this book to readers!

I love when I can learn about a new group of people. In this novel we get insight into a life of a queer Palestinian American woman and her life and the life of previous generations. My life can only be richer when I learn about more people and their lives. What a gift.