Review: Ink, Amanda Sun

Ink by Amanda Sun
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC of this book. THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW. CLICK ON THE + TO READ SPOILERS

The idea of this story is a brilliant one, a YA paranormal romance set in Japan based on Japanese Mythology. And the blurb of the book sounds incredible and makes you want to pick it up right away.

The start of the story - the heroine Katie Greene moves to Japan after the death of her mother, thrown into a different world and culture. Its easy to see how difficult it is for her to try and fit in, and it was an interesting start to the story, and we meet Tomohiro, the love interest when she has to go back to get something she's forgotten and needs to pass through somewhere he is when he's arguing with his girlfriend. Right off its a oh look, bad boy warning. He's gorgeous, he's dangerous and he's a complete jackass. But of course, she's fascinated by him when. And he has strange powers.

The moving drawings were interesting, and the story itself wasn't actually a bad one. It kept me going enough so I read it reasonably quickly because, like Katie, I wanted to know more about the drawings, why they moved and what his powers were and how the mythology came into it.

Katie was likeable enough, Tomohiro was kind of flat with his stay away I'm dangerous, but I can really care about you and you see the real me kind of thing. The love connection and the whole romance thing was unfortunately, way too cliched for my liking. Katie's friends Yuki and Tanaka were quite fun and entertaining.

There's also a potential for a love triangle as well, and danger from the Yakuza.

I did find the Kami quite fascinating, even though they are powerful, they are also quite dangerous, which leads to oh noes!! Forbidden love when Katie realises she's the reason Tomo's powers and drawings are going haywire.

I enjoyed the book, even though it is full of annoying YA Paranormal romance cliches, and in certain parts of the book, even though he annoyed me, even Tomohiro was quite likeable particularly towards the end of the novel. Same with Katie.

I read the book on a Kindle and a Kindle for iPad/iPhone app and found the drawings inserted in random paragraphs very distracting and annoying. It broke up the flow of the story. I would have liked to see a section at the back with the glossary maybe five or ten pages with the drawings all together. Maybe they work better in an actual paperback.



View all my reviews