REVIEWED by Jen B.

TITLE: Skin After Skin

SERIES: Psycop #8

AUTHOR: Jordan Castillo Price

PUBLISHER: JCP Books

LENGTH: 387 Pages

RELEASE DATE: June 25, 2017

BLURB:  A Crash Prequel

Fierce. Audacious. Independent. Curtis Ash can’t be bothered to settle down. He’s too busy enjoying his cushy job as a high-paid stylist, caught in a whirlwind of hookups, parties, and obscenely priced cocktails.

The only snarl in an otherwise charmed life is the salon’s hotshot colorist, Red Turner. Not only does Red put the whammy on customers and rake in all the big tips, he’s oblivious to Crash’s flirtation. But there will be plenty of time to win him over…so Crash thinks.

Thanks to his refusal to trust his gut, Crash not only tanks his career—he allows the one man who truly holds his interest to slip away. While he insists he doesn’t need a relationship to complete him, would sharing his life with someone really be so bad?

Skin After Skin is a sweeping saga that begins two years before “Among the Living” and ends just after “Spook Squad”. Experience PsyCop like you’ve never seen it before, through Crash’s eyes. Discover new facets of characters and events from the span of the entire series and beyond, all from the viewpoint of an extroverted empath.

Crash has been one of my favorite characters in the Psycop series.  I loved his snarkiness and attitude and couldn’t wait to read his story.  This is his story, told from his perspective, so it has a totally different feel to it than all of the previous Psycop installments.  This was both good and bad, in my opinion.

This is told in installments which take place throughout the timeline of the other books.  I loved that we got to see how Crash got started with his stylist career, but, at the same time, I was a bit bored with everything going on in the salon.  Things picked up a bit when he met Jacob, and it was really interesting to see things from a different perspective.  Much of this story is about Crash and his various relationships, with Jacob, Carolyn, Lydia, etc., and while we get to see a good bit of Jacob and Crash together, most of the physical stuff was off page.  I always thought Crash had a closer relationship to Vic, so it was also interesting to see how much more Jacob and Crash were involved before his friendship with Vic began, but it was also fun to see that from the start.

One of the other things I enjoyed was the segment about Crash going from skeptic to learning and mostly accepting that he had abilities of his own.

The other major happening was Crash’s relationship with Red, which began in his early salon days, ended pretty much before it began, but then picked back up at the end.  I never really had any feelings about Red, and while Crash kept thinking about him, I never really saw the connection between the two, even at the end, I just don’t think I was invested enough since they didn’t have a lot of interaction early on, and then he was absent until almost the end.

While this story didn’t grab me like the rest of the series, I did enjoy seeing some of the pieces filled in.  It has the same quality of writing I have come to expect from JCP, but I had a lot of trouble staying focused enough to make it to the end.  I seem to be in the minority on this one, so perhaps this one is a case of it’s me, not the book.  Regardless, I am still a huge fan of this author and series and look forward to getting back to the other side of things when Vic and Jacob return in the next installment.