(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
So… when this book arrived and I read the blurb, I didn’t think it was the kind of book that would have piqued my interest if I saw it in a book shop. Although it’s a paranormal, I have virtually no interest in poker… and I assumed that most of the book would be about the game of poker; which actually was the case, but I felt the book had a lot more to it than that.
I thought that both Telly and Clutch were interesting characters, though I did like Telly a lot more than Clutch for a lot of the book. I found it really interesting to see how Telly was trying to deal with his financial problems. I felt a lot of sympathy for Gretchen, since I was able to see how affected she was by what was happening with Telly. Even though it wasn’t his fault, I could see where Gretchen was coming from.
Although Clutch’s character had grown on me by the end of the book, I didn’t really like him very much during it. I thought that, even though he had his moments of empathy, he only cared about himself. I did have a lot of sympathy for Ginny and I thought the fact that she cared about Clutch and his daughter was obvious, even though Ruby wasn’t actually related to her. I really disliked Jenny. I was glad to see that she didn’t have things go completely right for her by the end of the book.
I got quite confused about Stan’s character. I mistook him for another character who’d shown up, but I liked seeing him interacting with Telly and although I didn’t know exactly why he was feeling so depressed at one point, it was nice to see that Telly was able to reason with him and that Stan was able to help him out. I also liked seeing Big Daddy and Cheryl. It was good to see that Telly did have friends around him and I thought the fact that he was one of the good guys came across really well. He seemed to have a really kind heart and he was someone who was really easy to relate to.
There was a lot about this book that felt really good to read. It drew me into the storyline really easily and Telly and Gretchen’s exchanges were really sweet, especially the ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ part.
I have another book by this author ready to read in the next few weeks or so. While it’s not actually connected to this book… I’m still interested in glimpsing more worlds and characters created by this author.
Ink of Blood 