The book that I read was Skin by Adrienne Maria Vrettos, its genre is fiction. The author did well on getting the reader’s attention by giving us an insight on an event before the story even begins. The author didn’t do well on getting us really close to one of the main characters because as something tragic happens to this character I didn’t feel very emotional about it. However, the characterization on the other characters is strong in this book. You get to understand the perspective of Donnie, the main character, and see the reasoning behind his actions. “It’s the same thing now-if I keep talking, they’ll keep listening. They’ll stay” (Vrettos 75). This relates to characterization because we see that Donnie is trying to keep the family as a union. This shows Donnie is caring and determined because he cares about his family and how something affects everyone, and he’s determined to keep his dad there just a little longer to spend the night. From this book I learned that you can change mentally and physically by people you have to be around with every day. Mostly every day you have to be around your peers and you sometimes hear them judge people by the way they look. This affects someone mentally because they think that they have to look a certain way to be considered attractive. This also affects them physically because they either want to lose or gain weight to meet those standards, this affects some people only. Karen, Donnie’s sister, takes a comment from her teacher personally making her upset and now she thinks that she’s fat. “’Karen, this is ridiculous. You’re not fat. Ms. Stephans was just trying to . . . ‘” (Vrettos 61). “’To what? What, Ma? What was she trying to do? She called me FAT!’” (Vrettos 61). “’She did not call you fat. She called you curvy’” (Vrettos 61). This shows that comments can change you mentally because now Karen thinks the teacher was trying to tell her that she’s fat, and she doesn’t want to eat her dinner now. Overall I would recommend this book to someone who likes to read books that are/seem to be realistic because it doesn’t involve fantasy. This book has possible events and is more of like based on a true story. I wouldn’t recommend this book to someone who likes to read about imaginary things such as monsters because it doesn’t contain any of that content.