Pick Your Scar

by Boshra Rasti

Some scars are best left untouched.

Under the watchful eyes of a consortium of scientists and the influence of mind-bending psychedelics, Matadar hopes to find healing from his childhood trauma in the Shell and aid future generations of Pamorians to live a trauma-free life.

But when Arelaine, Matadar's girlfriend, joins the experiment, the stakes take on a terrifying level of meaning for him and their relationship.

From the author of Surrogate Colony comes Pick Your Scar, a genre-bending, original work that explores the dark dimensions of the psyche and the necessity of acceptance.

Kindle Edition

About the author

Boshra was raised in British Columbia, Canada, and after years of working as an expatriate teacher in Qatar, she has returned home to continue her career in education. She earned a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership at Royal Roads University, which proved a fateful blow to her belief in anything hierarchical. However, it did spark her desire to flee from the real world and start writing about other ones. When she is not working to earn a living, she enjoys the escape that reading and writing lend her. She also enjoys physical running—now back in Canada, where the air doesn’t feel like a convection oven, but the hills make up for it.

Reviews

[Ellie Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

~About

The story is set in Pamora, a peaceful and idyllic land. Here, physicists have uncovered a fifth dimension, which they believe could be the key to altering unpleasant life events. These professionals seek volunteers over the age of eighteen, to help search for the fifth dimension.

Matadar and Arelaine (the leading characters) both lost a parent and both intend to enter Pamora’s simulated reality (‘The Shell’) to try and heal from their trauma. However, it is said that some people go crazy in the Shell, with such individuals being sent away to live in a forest sanctuary.

However, not all is as it seems in Pamora. When Matadar first enters the Shell, in the hopes of being free of his trauma, he becomes involved in a mysterious process he could never have envisioned.


~Characters

While there were many important characters within this story, I felt that the following three had the most impact; Matadar, Arelaine, and Venus.


-Matadar

Matadar was one of two protagonists. Having tragically lost his mother as a young child, he carried the wound of her loss around with him through life. He was a curious young man, stubborn and courageous, with a gift for finding patterns in things. He was also thoughtful, prone to overthinking situations, no doubt because of his childhood trauma. While there were times when I found myself frustrated by his character’s naivety in life, I also came to admire him overall for battling through many difficult situations, to reach the answers he sought.


-Arelaine

Arelaine was the second protagonist of the story. She was a kind and curious young woman, who felt great empathy for others. She shared Matadar’s trauma of losing a parent in childhood, in her case her father. Like Matadar, Arelaine sought answers as to what happened to her lost parent, in the hopes of healing her childhood trauma.

Her highly intuitive nature allowed her to pick up on subtle hints that indicated when things were not right. She was also smart and perceptive, seeing more than most people in Pamora. However, like Matadar, she was also a bit naïve to begin with – likely due to her youth – but soon began to learn when caution was necessary, to figure out how their world really worked. I came to admire Arelaine for many reasons, not least of all for her strength and resilience in times of personal hardship, and her determination to help those closest to her, even when it appeared that they had forsaken her.


-Venus

Finally, we come to Venus, the lead psychologist in charge of the fifth dimension project. She was a smart, beautiful and mysterious woman and appeared to want the best for the citizens of Pamora. However, I always felt as if I couldn’t fully trust her, like she was hiding something, but I could never put my finger on what it was. Overall, I liked how complex of a character she developed into, however, I never came to truly like her as an individual.


~Positive Aspects

There were many positive features to Pick Your Scar, which I have listed below.

-Firstly, the author’s writing style is clear, emotive, consistent and engaging.
-Secondly, the first-person, present-tense narration adds a sense of immediacy to the story’s events.

-Thirdly, the concept for the story was fascinating: a search to find a fifth dimension.
-In addition, the characters were unique, each with their own goals, motivations, past traumas, and individual thought processes. As such, the character’s experiences felt very lifelike.

-Furthermore, the plot was full of slowly escalating tension, mystery, and intrigue. I could not wait to see what happened next.

-Finally, the ending was shocking. It saddened me, yet it was also profound and deeply moving.


~Memorable Quotes

There were an endless amount of quotes I found while reading Pick Your Scar. However, I have chosen to quote the following six.

1) ‘There is no light without darkness’.
2) ‘You can’t move on if you can’t face the past’.

3) ‘People are more complicated than one action in their life’.
4) ‘The Destroyer and Creator cuts through the heart of every human’.

5) ‘Every action has a consequence. It is the great law of the universe – Even if it is unseen in this dimension, there is a ripple effect on others’.

6) ‘–one must come to honour one’s scars and not pick at them incessantly. That is the only way redemption works.’


~Overview

Overall, I found Pick Your Scar to be a wonderfully intriguing story, which explored the effect that the flow of time has on our lives as humans, and how desperately some seek to take control of it.

Key themes included loss, deception, family, love, a search for the truth, and time.

My Rating: 5 stars.
Recommended to: lovers of young-adult sci-fi / dystopian novels.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am actually a big Fan of this author, so when I saw that she had another book I knew I had to read it, and it didn’t disappoint, its very different of the world of surrogate colony and at the same time, very similar, we have an utopia that is in the reality a very wrong dystopian world.

We have two main character in the book, Matadar and Arelaine, one thing that I use to do when the names are really different to me is search in the internet the meanings, and Arelaine name means a very good person, someone that you can easily like, but Matadar, is really similar to a word that I have in my mother language “Matador” and that means killer, I don’t know maybe it was because of his name but he rubbed me the wrong way during the whole book, I couldn’t get myself to sympathise with him, every time he excused himself with his “scar” I just thought in my mind, “just grown up already”. He felt to me, as someone that only wanted power, to be better than anyone else.. But without spoilers I felt much closer to Arelaine and I empathised with her, and in the end she did what she had to do.

In this world people use the shell, a virtual place to have out of the world experiences that makes them reconnect with a “scar” from the past or face an adversity to be more grateful for their “perfect” life. But things are never as easy as they could be, in here, there’s been more than 10 years since the shell has been closed to the population, the same time as Arelaine father and Matadar Mother eloped and died, so it is a trauma that both have in common and made them be closer to each other…

My main complaint is that the ending felt a bit rushed, I know that the story was much more out of this world, like an episode of sliders, but I guess I needed a bit more of input about the ending, and explanation in how she got back, how some people still knew someone what was forgotten and how that all fitted in Pamoria and how will the shell fit in the future. There’s also some lose ends, and some things that were left unanswered, but I do like the way that the author brings the story to life.

Thank you BookSirens for this free ARC and this is my honest opinion.

[Lia (Roman) Rusu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book premise was extremely interesting and promising, but I found the novel lacking in delivery, subject probing and actual literary value.

The topic of trauma was brought into focus ad nauseam, but with little improvement or metamorphosis, with very slow and repetitive plot progress. I found the book slightly disappointing, but the meditative tone of the writing made up for the lacking engagement.

I would recommend the book to the very patient and poetry-prone reader who is seeking neither revelation nor excitement. Pick Your Scar is a non-revolutionary pastel piece of agreeable writing.

-+- Memorable quotes: -+-

"Everything worth discovering has an element of danger."

They say the only way to happiness is through comparison [...]

"No light without darkness: Nulla lux sine tenebris."

I can’t paint my father with one brush; people are more complicated than one action in their life.

"That’s got to be the worst thing, not trusting your government; it’s like not trusting your own mind."

-+- -+- -+-
I received an advance review copy for free (Thank you, BookSirens.), and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
-+- -+- -+-

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story follows Matadar and Arelaine, going back and forth between perspectives. They volunteer to participate in an experiment to deal with trauma. Matadar is old enough to qualify, so is accepted at the sign-up while Arelaine has to wait until she's old enough to be eligible. When she is, she volunteers but Matadar wants her to get out.

The memories and present day are distinguished well so they can be followed. However, because the story is written in the first person, it gets difficult at times to keep track of the character speakers, especially as they are not changed every chapter. Most chapter names do help identify the point of views. The story is about recognising underlying trauma and understanding what they are. But facing these traumas result in dire consequences neither Matadar nor Arelaine foresees. The book is ultimately a complex and complicated story to demonstrate karma that is unforeseeable.


I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[TaniaRina · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Maybe some dimensions are best untampered with.’
Especially, if one needs to cleanse the mind with a “sacred elixir” first. Yeah, I’ll stay right here with the rest of the unenlightened miscreants thank you very much. Just don’t throw me in that briar patch, er, I mean that Forest Sanctuary.

While the below quotes have some truth to them, Pamorians take this concept to extremes:
‘One can never know true happiness if one does not know disappointment.’
‘We need to experience what darkness is to see the light.’

One take-away:
Don’t follow people who don’t believe in their own cause. Sometimes, it’s better to trust your gut in ignorance than to trust people spewing testimonials.

‘What you seek, you find.’, so be careful where you look. Darkness is *not* your old friend…


I’ve read other books by this author and will continue to do so. In the meantime, I’m gonna go listen to some tracks by The 5th Dimension to yank me back into reality…and my sanity.

[One · Rating 3 out of 5]

In a utopia the government encourages the healing of emotional scares through severe tram-a. Arelaine and Matadar are both approaching the age where they must pick their scar. But they have no idea just how dark and twisted this journey will be for them. Did you like it ? Yes and no it takes a very long time for any real action/conflict to happen. It is also a bit confusing at times because we bounce between main characters views; one of which is taking experimental drugs so that side of things get alittle wild. I would recommend because it is a trippy tale.
I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was entertaining. The plot was different and unique and did keep me guessing. My main problem with the book is the grammar. There are extremely frequent sentences that have very poor grammar. I gave up counting the sentences that have a multitude of colons, semicolons, and dashes all within one sentence. Thankfully I could get my ebook to read itself to me or I might not have finished it (if I had to physically read all the grammar mistakes)

This could use a good editor…

But again - the plot and characters were fun…

I received a free copy and am leaving this reviews voluntarily.

[Kat M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boshra Rasti has a great writing style and does the scifi genre so well. I was invested in what was going on in the world, the plot worked for this world. I enjoyed the characters and was glad to get to know them. I can't wait to read more from Boshra Rasti.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Lilla Petra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the author’s previous books so I was excited to read this one. The plot was so promising, I was rooting for this book but the execution was not great. I feel bad for writing this review but - as this was sent to me in exchange for my review - I have to do it: it was quite confusing and I feel that we didn’t get a closure, the ending felt rushed. I was soooo annoyed with every character (they were all selfish and childish) and especially about the romance.
The writing style was different (and not in a good way) from the author’s previous books: there was at least one weird, unnecessary, mannered monologue in every chapter about the need of healing from the trauma…it made me cringe every time.
To end this review on a positive note, I really liked the constant doubts and trust issues the main characters had.