Ink of Blood

(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).

(This review may contain spoilers).

Ideally, I’d give this book 3.5 stars. While I personally don’t feel it’s quite at 4 stars, I did find it really easy and entertaining to read.

It was a bit disappointing that the synopsis gave away who the bad guy was. I would have liked there to be a bit more mystery involved. I also wasn’t sure what the four pieces that both Andrew and Robert were working towards were meant to actually be… although I did understand their importance to the organisation fairly well.

I have to say, I found Andrew to be a character with a bit more depth to him than Robert… though the character I very much preferred was Ramos. I found him intriguing and there was a lot more to him than was first revealed. It would have been good to have the opportunity to see more of his interactions with Dominic. I would have liked to see more of the personal relationships altogether.

Although there were some elements of mystery in this book, I did find it difficult to figure out the clues and how they related to where the pieces were. There were a couple of nice scenes containing banter… but I found that there were a lot of information dumps in the narration and too much summarising of the story.

I found it interesting to read about the past involving Andrew’s wife… though it would have been nice to be shown about her, rather than told. It was good to see that she still affected the other characters and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Brad. While I was glad that he ended up with company, though, his feelings for Jenna didn’t really come across as very realistic.

It was good to have Monica’s and John’s wedding plans interspersed with the action involving Andrew and Robert. I didn’t really like Brittany, even though I think she did care about her son and daughter. There were some nice family scenes… I just think it would have been good to be able to see the story expanded and with more showing rather than telling.

I’m not sure I’d read the second book in this series. It depends on how expanded the story and characters are.