(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
When I first saw this book, I was immediately taken by the front cover. And even though I’ve read a lot of young adult books that are badly written, the blurb of this book immediately made me want to read it… so I jumped at the chance when it was offered.
The first scene of this book was one that instantly caught my attention. Even though there was the potential for it to be cliched (a young heroine with a tragic past), it was good that the very first part of the book focused on Sadie’s mother.
I found it really interesting to learn about the different kinds of Talents that the people like Sadie had. It was also good to see something of the history of how the other kinds of humans came about. I would have liked to know a bit more about the distribution of Talents and how common or rare some of them were. While there were hints that some of them shared Talents (like the Siren one), I didn’t have all of my questions answered.
I did like Sadie’s character quite a bit, though I didn’t really like the romance. Even though Kian was an intriguing character, it would have been good to see a bit more time spent developing the feelings between him and Sadie.
While I did get a bit confused with the secondary characters at times, for the most part, I thought they were well-developed and interesting. I particularly liked Rebecca… and even though I didn’t see any scenes with Liam in, I did feel as if I was able to know him through how much the others knew and cared about him. And it was really good to see how his brother and sister accepted Sadie… though I didn’t see a lot of evidence of how people treated them.
I was really glad to see that, apart from the first scene, the book stuck with one first person perspective… though I did notice it fell into the trap of allowing Sadie to read the thoughts/feelings of the others around her.
This book was really quick and easy to read and I enjoyed learning about the world and the characters. While this book was shorter than I was expecting, it was still a nice length. I would definitely be interested in reading more books by this author in the future.
Ink of Blood 