Book Review: Scar Tissue

Scar Tissue: Seven Stories of Love and Wounds by Marcus Sakey is a short e-book of stories. Sakey includes not only 7 stories but also excerpts from four of his books.

The seven stories are:
The Days When You Were Anything Else
The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away
Gravity and Need
No One
As Breathing
The Time Before the Last
Cobalt

The excerpts are from:
The Blade Itself
At The City’s Edge
Good People
The Amateur

 My favorite story was the first one: The Days When You Were Anything Else. It’s about a man who has gone straight – a man who used to be very crooked. He’s surviving in this new life, not prospering, but he’s out of the game and will never go back. That’s what he thinks, anyway. Until he has no choice. As a reader, you have to ask yourself, What would make me go back into a life I’ve turned my back on? Who or what would I kill for? Would I take a life? Would I give up my own life?

Sakey’s stories pull at your gut and some make you want to turn away. Not all have happy endings, but then a lot of things in our lives don’t have happy endings, do they? Even when you think, I don’t want to read this, or this is too personal and makes my stomach clench, you’ll keep reading. With each protagonist (and each story has its own lead character), you live in that man’s mind and you’ll wish hard for a happy ending. It won’t matter whether you approve of the guy or what he’s doing, you’ll keep reading.

Each story is different and compelling, even The Time Before the Last, which is only 25 words long.

I’m giving Scar Tissue: Seven Stories of Love and Wounds by Marcus Sakey a Straight From Hel rating of Hel-of-a-Writer. (This is a new rating level suggested by Karen from Mentor and it fits this book.)
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FTC Disclaimer: This book was sent to me by Dana Kaye, of Kaye Publicity, who suggested I might want to review it, but this did not influence my review. And I almost didn’t review Scar Tissue. Not because I didn’t like it, ‘cause I did, but because I don’t have an eReader. So Ms. Kaye sent me a printed-out copy. Printed on both sides. With no page numbers. I took it with me on a trip to Colorado and read it on the plane and in the hotel room and in the restaurant and in Starbucks. And got the pages mixed up. Did I mention there were no page numbers? I had to stop twice and figure out the pages and put things back in order. When they’re out of order, they tend not to make sense. It works better to have the pages in order, even with my brain. But you won’t have to worry about that since it comes in eForm.