Ironskin by Tina Connolly

I recently made a determination and I have to stick to it. If I can’t get into a book, I’m done and sadly Ironskin by Tina Connolly is falling victim to the. The premise sounds fascinating and new and I really wanted to read it, but I started it a week ago and haven’t touched it for four days.

Jane Eliot wears an iron mask.  It’s the only way to contain the fey curse that scars her cheek. The Great War is five years gone, but its scattered victims remain—the ironskin.

When a carefully worded listing appears for a governess to assist with a “delicate situation”—a child born during the Great War—Jane is certain the child is fey-cursed, and that she can help.

Teaching the unruly Dorie to suppress her curse is hard enough; she certainly didn’t expect to fall for the girl’s father, the enigmatic artist Edward Rochart. But her blossoming crush is stifled by her own scars, and by his parade of women. Ugly women, who enter his closed studio…and come out as beautiful as the fey.

Jane knows Rochart cannot love her, just as she knows that she must wear iron for the rest of her life. But what if neither of these things is true? Step by step Jane unlocks the secrets of her new life—and discovers just how far she will go to become whole again.

Ironskin may sound fascinating, but the plot is just to slow. I’m currently at 17% and I’m not really sure what the plot is at this point. Well…other than what the blurb says, but while I was hooked by the cover copy, I’m not hooked with the beginning. I get that there needs to be some world building, and Connolly is doing a great job with it, but she also needs to sprinkle in a little intrigue that makes me want to find answers instead of just going with the flow. I’ve only been able to get through 17% of the story thus far, but at least 15% has been about how Jane is trying to get Dorie to act more “human” because any displays of being fae are bad, but I’ve gotten that at this point. Give me something more. Give me more of Dorie’s background. What is up with the woods? They are woods that Jane can’t go into, okay…why? I’m bored with Dorie. She’s different, so what, why am I suppose to care about that?

A lot of my problems with Ironskin is due to how slow of a start it has. I want to immerse myself in a world and just lose myself with the characters…I want to escape and I’m not getting that feeling here.

I’m not giving up on Ironskin though. I really am intrigued by the story as a whole and I want to know what is up with Rochart and what goes on in his studio. I want to know what is wrong with the woods.  I want to know more about the world and why the characters are acting they way they are. For me, I think Ironskin is one of those stories where I need uninterrupted time. Where I can sit down and just read. If I could do that, I have no doubt Ironskin would be fabulous because while I was reading it, I was there, walking along with Jane, wondering what was going on. But the moment I put it down, there wasn’t enough to keep me drawn to it. It’s been four days at least since I picked it up and I’ve had to stop myself twice from starting a different book. That tells me right there that I’m not getting through Ironskin. Not right now at least.