Table of Contents
Content Warnings: Death of a sibling, car accident, grief, guilt, self-harm ideation, blood/gore, gaslighting, cyberbullying, parental grief
Such Lovely Skin does something clever with the evil doppelgänger premise—the monster is more than a corruption, it's a photocopy set to maximum contrast so that all Viv's worst qualities are printed in ink too dark to deny. Viv is a Twitch streamer, a chronic liar, and someone carrying the weight of her little sister's death. When a demonic mimic enters her life, it starts destroying everything she's built—but here's the thing: Viv has spent so long lying for sympathy and scattering rumours like salt that no one believes her when she insists the horror isn't her fault this time. It's the girl who cried wolf turned up to eleven, and the wolf is wearing her face.
Tatiana Schlote-Bonne's debut is viciously smart about the mechanics of consequences. The horror here isn't just supernatural—it's the slow-motion realisation that Viv has built a life where the truth can't save her because she's spent years making herself unbelievable. The doppelganger is terrifying, yes, but it's working with materials Viv already provided. It takes every lie, every slick manipulation, and turns them to tools—dismantling her life with a butcher's systematic attention to the joints. It's The Ring with receipts, and the bottom line is brutal.
I know some readers will balk at Viv's voice—the internet slang, the "ugh" and "wtf," the gaming jargon—but I'm from the internet, as they say, and it read as authentic to me. Schlote-Bonne clearly knows online culture, and more importantly, she nails the particular hellscape of being a young woman trying to build a platform online. The casual misogyny, the weaponised doubt, the way Viv's history of lying intersects with broader cultural unwillingness to believe girls—it's all there, and it's not subtle. Shouldn't be. Isn't—not for those of us up to our chins in it.
The grief, too, is handled with an unflinching clarity that I appreciated. Viv isn't grieving in acceptable ways, and that's understandable. She's numb, she's selfish, she's trying to throw money at her parents as penance instead of giving them honesty. Meanwhile, her parents are drowning in their own loss and can barely see her, which is its own kind of grief. I lost a son, so I recognise that particular drowning—Schlote-Bonne doesn't reach for the parents' hands to pull them out, which is the only honest choice. It's ugly. Uncomfortable. Grief has the texture of rot lodged deep in a place you can't reach—behind the ribs, maybe, or the back of the throat. Schlote-Bonne doesn't sanitise it, and she offers no easy grace for the wreckage grief leaves in its wake.
It's possible some readers might flag the twists as predictable, but there's a difference between obvious and properly telegraphed. The clues are there if you're paying attention—but that's good craft, not a failure of surprise. A plot twist you can't possibly see coming often means the author cheated. Is it the most challenging mystery to unravel? No, but not every story needs to be. Schlote-Bonne plays fair with her structure, and the satisfaction comes not from shock but from watching the pieces click into place.
Ultimately, at times Viv isn't likable, and that's the point. She's done real harm—to Ash, to anyone who believed her, to the foundations her life is built on. The book asks whether someone like that deserves saving, and more interestingly, whether she can save herself when no one else believes her capable of truth. The answer is complicated. Knotted. The kind of knot you can't untie without cutting something away.
Such Lovely Skin is fast-paced, genuinely creepy, and smarter than it needs to be. I'm still thinking about that final scene—the one where you realise the doppelganger might have been the honest one all along. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Either way, bad photocopies leave residue. This one's still dark on my fingertips.
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