Under Your Skin,
By Sabine Durrant

Book 10/50

Referenced by reviewers as a potential new ‘Gone Girl,’ I jumped at the chance to read this modern day whodonnit.

The book starts off with a bang; within the first chapter, the main character, Gaby Mortimer, is running through a London park and stumbles across a dead body… the dead body of a girl who happens to look a lot like her.

Odd coincidences and shared communication between our protagonist and the murdered girl lead the cops back to Gaby and she is left bewildered, along with the reader. For instance, some of Gaby’s clothes are found in the dead girl’s apartment. She’s questioned by police and then released, and we start to learn a bit of background on our main character, her friends and family as the story continues. Gaby’s husband is distant, her colleague wants her out, and her daughter and her best friend are as sweet as pie. On the outside, Gaby has a decent, happy life. But on the inside, it’s apparent that she feels as though everything in her world is hanging by a thread. And finding a dead body that looks just like her doesn’t help.

Under Your Skin is one of those novels that makes you question everyone and their motives. I was constantly saying to myself, ‘The murderer could have been Person X , because Y chain of events could have happened,’ which is something you definitely want to feel when reading a mystery. I won’t give away the ending, but it may surprise a lot of readers.

I recommend this novel for Gillian Flynn fans. While I don’t necessarily agree that it’s the next Gone Girl, I did enjoy it and it kept me on the edge of my seat.  You’ll just have to read it yourself to find out who gets under whose skin in the end.