Siobhan O’Brien is the unlikely name of the Korean-American private detective at the heart Sung J. Woo’s Skin Deep. Sioban takes on a missing persons case involving a family friend that comes with a multitude of complications. She gets frustrated by all the obstacles she encounters while trying to unravel the mystery, but she falls back on the words of her mentor, Ed Baker, who told her, “Getting to the end of a case is never a straight line.”
It touches on themes of interacial adoption, family dynamics and the power of wealth and beauty.
There is a little light romance going on, but it doesn’t overwhelm the plot.
The book was a quick read and evenly paced. It kept you guessing and the characters are believable.
One of the things that made Skin Deep a particularly fun read for me is it’s Central New York setting. As a Western New York resident, I could recognize many of the lightly fictionalized locations.
Description
Korean-American adoptee Siobhan O’Brien has spent much of her life explaining her name and her family to strangers, but her more pressing problem is whether to carry on the PI agency that her dead boss unexpectedly left to her.
Easing into middle age, Siobhan would generally rather have a donut than a romance, but when an old friend asks Siobhan to find her daughter who has disappeared from her dorm room, the rookie private detective’s search begins in Llewellyn College. A private institution of higher learning in upstate New York, Llewellyn, for the first time in its two- hundred-year history, has opened its doors to men, causing a clash between the female students and their former fashion-model president.
The financial reasons prompting the change seem like a ruse when fringe- group The Womyn of Llewellyn, aided by Siobhan, discover a newly built science center, which is under 24- hour surveillance. As Siobhan delves deeper into locating the missing girl and campus politics, she encounters vegan cooking that just might kill her, possibly deadly yoga poses, and politely dangerous billionaires. This first in a new series introduces an endearing PI heroine readers aren’t going to want to put down.
I received this Advanced Reader Copy of Skin Deep from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
