Review: Faceless by Alyssa Sheinmel

Title: Faceless
Author: Alyssa Sheinmel
Publisher: Chicken House
Publication Date: January 7th 2016
Part of A Series?: No!
I Got A Copy Through: Guardian Children's Books

Blurb Description: When Maisie is struck by lightning, her face is partially destroyed. She's lucky enough to get a face transplant, but how do you live your life when you can't even recognize yourself anymore? She was a runner, a girlfriend, a good student ...a normal girl. Now, after a single freak accident, all that has changed. As Maisie discovers how much her looks did and didn't shape her relationship to the world, she has to redefine her own identity, and figure out what 'lucky' really means.

**I'M GIVING AWAY A COPY OF THIS BOOK HERE**

**MY REVIEW**

‘Maisie 2.0 sucks. The original Maisie would have kicked her butt. I may have chosen life, but I have no idea how live like this.’

I’d like you to think about who you are. You must be someone, you must have a certain set of characteristic personality traits, you must have things you like doing, you must have a group of friends you hand out with; you are a somebody. Now, keeping in mind all that you are, think about what you and the rest of the world associate who are with – intentionally, or unintentionally, we know who we are based on what we look like.

You may be skinny or big built, you may be African, Indian or American, you could be a jock or a geek, you could wear glasses or you could not but look in the mirror, and realise that most people that know you associate who you are with what you look like. Now, imagine all that changing.

Imagine looking like a puzzle piece – half of your features yours and the other pieces from someone else’s face. Who would you be, if you wake up and can’t even recognize yourself in the mirror anymore? And from a book of with that storyline, I expected brilliantness. Utterly, mind-blowingly, brilliant. And I simply didn’t get what I wanted.

In a freak accident involving a storm and an electrical fire, Maisie Roe Winters wakes up a month later from a medically induced coma, but everything seems strange. She can’t feel anything more – from the hospital food forced into her body to the tears that sometimes (okay, often) run down her cheeks. Because Maisie isn’t herself anymore. Maisie is the girl with only half a face, and her life will never be the same again.

Until she gets an opportunity that only a few people in the world have so far – a face transplant.

Fast forward a few months, and Maisie is back at home, in her room, in her old life, but nothing feels the same. Maybe it’s the lack of her parents fighting, or the fact that she doesn’t like the taste of anything she used to, the fact that she can’t talk to her best friend or her boyfriend nearly as much as she used to or the fact that she feels she can’t run away from everything hard because she’s been told her can’t run anymore.

Or, you know, the fact that her neck feels like it can’t hold her face up.

Like I said, I expected brilliantness, but I got something mediocre. Faceless was extremely well researched, and had this completely unique storyline, and I was SO SO excited about it. And yet, while there were all these emotions being portrayed, all these ignorant people that didn’t get anything nor were they trying to understand, but I wasn’t feeling anything. I can’t explain why, possibly because it was slow paced, possibly because I hyped it up so much in my head, but regardless, I didn’t like it as much as I though it would.

POINTS FOR: Storyline, pretty UK cover, Indian boyfriend, original concept, supportive, caring parents, (did I mention CONCEPT?)

POINTS AGAINST: Slow Pace, Ass of an Indian Boyfriend, way too much complaining, stupid unsupportive high schoolers.

In the end, I’d recommend it for the pure originality! 4 Stars!