(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).
(This review may contain spoilers).
I found myself pulled into the storyline in this book really quickly. I really liked Jasmine’s relationship with her son and it was really awesome to see how accepting she was of his gift, even though his health wasn’t great and healing took a lot of energy.
What was also interesting was the contrast with the other families. There was one extreme to the other that was shown, with Jasmine completely accepting of her son’s abilities, but Mara’s father so hateful of it that was abusive. And then there was Kaylee’s family in between. So I thought it was really interesting to see the different contrasts between the way the parents handled their children’s gifts.
I did have some confusion about the ages of the characters. Mara, for instance, seemed much younger in her first appearance… but her interactions with Cody made it clear she was quite a bit older than I’d originally thought.
I felt there was a nice variety in the different gifts that the children had, but I would have liked a bit more background, as well as seeing some of the gifts of the others. I was also confused about Amanda’s gift for quite a long time, since it seemed to be one thing but was then revealed to be something else.
I really liked Cody as a character and I also liked Kino. It was good to see the way they bantered with each other. I would have liked to see some parts of the book from Cody’s perspective, though, because two out of the three romances seemed really rushed and I would have liked to see that more developed.
I also really loved Dante. I like animals being in books and he was no exception. There were a couple of things I didn’t see coming, but the foreshadowing did work to have it actually make sense.
I would probably read a sequel to this book at some point in the future. Although it would have been nice to see the romance developed more, I did enjoy this and there was some attempt to ‘humanise’ the bad guys.
Ink of Blood 