A young, queer Palestinian American woman pieces together her great-aunt’s secrets in this “enchanting, memorable” (Bustle) debut, confronting questions of sexual identity, exile, and lineage. “As beautifully detailed as a piece of Palestinian embroidery, this bold, vivid novel will speak to readers across genders, cultures, and identities.”—Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Fencing with the King A THEM BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD In a Pacific Northwest hospital far from the Rummani family’s ancestral home in Palestine, the heart of a stillborn baby begins to beat and her skin turns vibrantly, permanently cobalt blue. On the same day, the Rummanis’ centuries-old soap factory in Nablus is destroyed in an air strike. The family matriarch and keeper of their lore, Aunt Nuha, believes that the blue girl embodies their sacred history, harkening back to a time when the Rummanis were among the wealthiest soap-makers and their blue soap was a symbol of a legendary love. Decades later, Betty returns to Aunt Nuha’s gravestone, faced with a difficult decision: Should she stay in the only country she’s ever known, or should she follow her heart and the woman she loves, perpetuating her family’s cycle of exile? Betty finds her answer in partially translated notebooks that reveal her aunt’s complex life and struggle with her own sexuality, which Nuha hid to help the family immigrate to the United States. But, as Betty soon discovers, her aunt hid much more than that. The Skin and Its Girl is a searing, poetic tale about desire and identity, and a provocative exploration of how we let stories divide, unite, and define us—and wield even the power to restore a broken family. Sarah Cypher is that rare debut novelist who writes with the mastery and flair of a seasoned storyteller.

In the end, Cypher's novel is about how a lesbian woman navigated her family and kept her secrets while living in diaspora from her home in Palestine. Everyone agreed that story was terrific. The issue was that it was not the only, or even the most prominent, story that Cypher is telling. Cypher uses a magically real premise -- a girl born with stone-like bright blue skin -- as a way to explore the heritage and separation that the Rummani family, a clan of Palestinians in America. This is revealed through the reflections of the daughter Betty as she looks over the grave of her aunt Nuha. Betty then tells the story that she discovered of Nuha's life and of her own, highlighting the complex and secret-filled history of the family and its soap business. We all felt that this story was compelling and thoughtful, and Cypher created some wonderful scenes, most specifically Nuha's return to Palestine both in terms of dealing with Israeli security and meeting the people left behind in her original home. But Betty is at her Aunt's grave to get advice about a choice she's making to potentially move away with her love interest and that plot is never actually resolved. Literally, it's never clear what Betty does; Cypher just forgets about that plot in the detailing of the family story. That oversight is the core issue with the novel -- everything around Betty's blue skin feels extraneous to the important story about the aunt. That's strange, because the story starts with Betty and a lot of time is spent on Betty's childhood and connections that all seems irrelevant when Nuha's story takes off. It almost felt like Cypher figured out that Nuha was the main character halfway through the book and then never rewrote the first half. That said, a least one member of NUBClub really liked the novel and all of found strengths in it. We're not saying you shouldn't read it; we just wished Cypher cut out the excess and stuck to the great story she had.