Under the Skin by Zara West

Under the Skin by Zara West

🍸🍸🍸1/2

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Synopsis

Born poor and raised on the streets, celebrated bridge builder and billionaire, Mic Vargas is knee-deep in the construction of a trouble-plagued bridge from Manhattan to New Jersey. He really can’t afford to take in a stray thief and fall in love with her. But when a beautiful, snappy-tongued, illegal immigrant literally drops at his feet, he becomes consumed with saving her and her family from poverty.

Cat burglar, Lena Correr stopped trusting anyone long ago. Not even a rich, handsome billionaire with good intentions can break through her defenses. At least, not until an East Coast crime boss threatens her family and forces her to steal for him. Mic vows to help her and her family escape the hell they are in. But will the man Lena is coming to love succeed, or will he end up dead at the hands of an old enemy?

Review

Let’s talk about all the things I loved about this book. Mic is a treasure. He’s almost too much of a treasure. He’s a sweetheart of a guy who has plenty of money, who goes around secretly helping homeless people and other folks in need. He has a disability, and he’s found a way to use it to make himself into even more of a badass. Someone tries to steal from him – twice in the same incident – and he focuses on helping them instead of turning them in.

Lena is less easy to love, but when I sat back and examined why I was reacting to her the way I was I found she didn’t have a whole lot of options available to her. I wonder if that, in the end, didn’t have something to do with my reaction to the book as a whole. Lena’s undocumented status severely limits her options. She’s a kickass thief and she’s built of determination, but she essentially has zero agency through most of the book. She steals because if she doesn’t her family will starve. She can’t access any other means of support because she’s undocumented. She can’t ask Mic for help or trust him because she doesn’t have an actual brick in place of her brains. She’s not stupid.

So she’s got a lot of the traits I love in a character, but the situations she finds herself in stem from a lack of real agency and I found that difficult to cope with. Especially when Mic was literally the only person on the page with any interest in her at all.

There is murder, which I enjoy in my entertainment, and the person who gets killed on screen thoroughly deserves it. We have the threat of sexual violence, which was realistic but gross, and Lena being forced to use sex to get access to higher-security targets. Once again, this speaks to Lena’s lack of agency in this story and made me feel deeply uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to make me feel uncomfortable, and if so mission accomplished. I’m kind of cringing at this victimization of a young Latina, but here we are.

Again, Lena is tough as nails. She never stops fighting, but she does know when to bide her time and when to act. That part is a great characterization that I needed to see.

In the end, two things made this a three and a half star book instead of four. We’ve talked about the lack of agency for Lena, so we don’t need to dive into that any further.

Another is Mic’s disability. It’s amazing to have a character who has a disability presented as a hero, and as an action hero too. The thing is, Mic’s disability hampers him when it’s good for the plot, and it’s an asset to him when that is what works for the plot. If the guy has his own private doctor and medical facility at home, maybe he shouldn’t be using his prosthesis in quite that way?  I’m just saying. That said, the author did mention some of the consequences of Mic’s loss to his life beyond simply having a prosthesis and I think that’s important.

I received a copy of this book for my own reading pleasure. While initially I had a few issues with the book, after sleeping on it I realized I enjoyed the book a lot more than I thought I did. If you like nonstop action and a few plot twists, you’re going to like this book.

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