Under Her Skin

by Adriana Anders

Overview

His scarred hands are the gentlest I've ever known. If only life were a fairy tale where Beauty got to keep her Beast…

Every morning I wake up and remind myself I am not my past, but beneath my drab clothing hides a secret—proof of the abuse I suffered at the hands of my possessive ex, tattooed on my skin in a lurid reminder of everything I've survived. I'm alone and in hiding, trying to rebuild some semblance of a normal life. I didn't expect healing to come in the form of a rough ex-con whose rage drives him in ways I'll never understand.

Ivan's scars are on the inside—a wounded soul like me. But day by day, this gentle giant proves to me that there are second chances in life, and he deserves them as much as I do. And maybe finding each other will finally allow us to pick up our broken pieces and make something beautiful and new…

This high-heat romance is an emotional tale of survival and contains strong themes of past domestic/sexual abuse. Please see reviews for details.

Praise for Under Her Skin:

"A dark and emotional tale that will make your spine tingle as well as your heart."—SARINA BOWEN, USA Today bestselling author of Bittersweet

"The perfect romance…a hint of danger, a whole lot of spice, and an HEA you believe in."—ANNE CALHOUN, award-winning author of Under the Surface

"Emotionally riveting page-turner."—Publishers Weekly STARRED Review

"Incredibly sexy, heartbreaking, and intense."—Kirkus STARRED Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781492633853
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	02/07/2017
Series:	Blank Canvas , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	287,311
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Adriana Anders is the award-winning author of the Blank Canvas series. Under Her Skin, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017, and winner of two 2018 Holt Medallions, has been featured in Bustle, USA Today Happy Ever After, and Book Riot. Today, she resides with her tall French husband and two small children in France, where she writes the gritty, emotional love stories of her heart.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/12/2016
In this emotionally riveting page-turner, debut author Anders creates two broken but highly sympathetic protagonists who elicit each other’s inner strength as each seeks to heal from poor choices and toxic relationships. Uma is on the run from her abusive boyfriend after a night of torture in which he covered her body with horrible tattoos. She lands in tiny Blackwood, Va., where a local skin clinic offers free tattoo removal for abused women. After getting a job as a live-in companion to an elderly woman, Uma is drawn to her gruff new neighbor, Ivan, a metalworker and self-defense teacher that strays of many species turn to for nurture. The kindness, integrity, growing trust, and playful, steamy chemistry between Uma and Ivan allows them both to find hope in the possibility of a healthy relationship. Anders’s strong cast of supporting characters includes Uma’s reclusive employer, Ivan’s sister, and the local bartender, and the town becomes a character in itself. Readers will be hungry for more from Anders’s pen. Agent: Laura Bradford, Laura Bradford Literary. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"This super-sexy but nonetheless poignant love story pulls at the heartstrings." — RT Book Reviews

"Emotionally riveting page-turner...Readers will be hungry for more from Anders’s pen." — Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

"An incredibly sexy, heartbreaking, and intense romantic debut. " — Kirkus Reviews

"This is book one in a series and I am definitely looking forward to reading more." — Smexy Books

" I really enjoyed these complex and profound characters and I believe they really made this story worthwhile." — Harlequin Junkie

"Gimme. More. Thoughtful, well-developed characters with a wonderfully paced arc drove me through the entire book." — That’s What I’m Talking About

"Anders’ cast of well-rounded supporting characters will have readers on edge, ready for the next installments in her Black Canvas series." — Booklist

"Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2017" — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2016-12-06
In small-town Virginia, a woman trying to erase her abusive past falls for a towering, reclusive blacksmith with secrets of his own. Uma Crane escaped her abuser with nothing but the clothes—and scars—on her back. Covered in jagged, ugly ink bearing the hateful words of her ex, she makes it to Blackwood, Virginia, to begin the process of tattoo removal. When she takes a job assisting an eccentric old woman, she meets the blacksmith next door, a hulking presence in a flannel shirt with a big beard and scraggly mane. Ivan is the classic strong, silent type, an outwardly terrifying man with an incredibly soft heart. He begins to care for Uma the way he does his menagerie of strays: dogs, cats, chickens, and even a baby skunk that wormed their ways onto his back porch and into his caretaking heart. Uma is resistant: she's only in Blackwood for a short time, and she's suffering from the aftershocks of a brutal night relayed in terrifyingly detailed flashbacks. Anders portrays Uma's post-traumatic stress not as a checklist of generalized symptoms but as a complex, always-morphing element of one woman's past, present, and future. While plot elements and secondary characters are predictable (the reappearance of the ex is a foregone conclusion), Anders elevates the "sex heals" narrative common in romance with lovely writing and deeply emotional intimate scenes. Importantly, Uma's recovery is her own achievement, aided by the women in her life, not something bestowed on her via the attentions of a gorgeous man. An incredibly sexy, heartbreaking, and intense romantic debut.

Kirkus Reviews