What would you do to have the body of your dreams?

Kiera hates being overweight and hides behind thick layers of clothing. One night, her friends
present an opportunity that seems impossible to believe. With a single spell, she can have the
thin physique she’s always coveted.

But all magic comes with a price: no sex or she’ll revert back to her old body. Kiera accepts the
cost. It’s not like she has men lined up at her door. Obeying this one tiny rule isn’t difficult at
all—until the night she meets Cain, a were-tiger and a soldier with the Eternal Forces.

When a slew of unexplained murders forces Kiera and Cain together, they’ll have to face the
horrors of their pasts. Will Kiera realize she is worth more than her outward appearance? Or will
she make the wrong the choice and lose everything—including her life?

Review

Skin Deep intrigued me from the beginning with it’s interesting premise. Keira is overweight and she’s unhappy with her body, so her friends engage the help of a gypsy who puts a spell on her to be thin. The catch is, she can’t have sex (EVER) or the spell will be broken. This seems like an easy rule to abide by, since no one ever pays her any attention anyway, but of course, once she’s skinny she meets the man of her dreams and he (immediately) wants her.

I’m going to start with what I didn’t like. I know it seems like a lot, but bear with me because I enjoyed this book a lot. I read it in a day.

I did have several issues with this story, however. My first issue was that it didn’t seem like Kiera ever tried to lose weight. She was so miserable with her body, but she ate a whole package of Little Debbies in one sitting. Before people jump on me, I have been overweight my entire life, but it CAN be changed with a little hard work. It didn’t seem like Kiera wanted to do the work. Subsequently, she never accepted her body. By the end of the book, she had made no changes mentally in that department, which seemed like it was supposed to be a main point of the story, but it didn’t happen. The main male character, Cain, was smokin’ hot. I would add him to my book boyfriend list, except for the fact that he was over the top with his “You’re mine and no one else’s.” I love a dominant shifter just as much as the next girl, but he was too forceful, especially with a woman who had suffered abuse prior to meeting him.

My final issue was that the author glossed over, or completely skipped several key scenes. The first being when the gypsy tells Keira the stipulations of her spell. The scene cuts out right before she says it. In this case, it didn’t work as a suspense creating device.

With all that said, I did love this book. The characters were believable, the story was strong. I understood Kiera’s pain and fear from the beginning. Being overweight is hard. There’s no easy fix and for someone who as struggled with it and been told that she will never be anything but ugly and fat and that no one will ever want her because of it, it’s not an easy thing to change, nor is it possible to see yourself as anything other than ugly or fat. Especially when the world seems to think the most beautiful women are rail thin.

I give this book three stars, because I really did love it. Ms. Martin is a very talented writer and I look forward to reading more from her.

 

Megan D. Martin is a multi-published author, mother, student and editor. In her spare time she enjoys decorating her house with strange things that do not match, playing her old school Nintendo Entertainment System, and buying fish for her many fish tanks.