Ink of Blood

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).

(This review may contain spoilers).

I have a few mixed feelings about this book. While I thought the idea was a really good one and I knew Dawn from Dawn of Hope, I found the sequel harder to read than the first book. The concept was a really interesting one… but I didn’t feel that there was very much tension in this book.

While it was good to see that there was more dialogue in this book, I did think that there were quite a few scenes that were glossed over. Due to the constant switching between first and third person, I did find the story to be quite hard to follow. And there wasn’t very much in the way of mystery, due to being told what was going on from outside sources… something I felt really didn’t work, since I spent most of the book waiting for the bad stuff to happen.

It was good to see more of some of the other characters in the book, though Dawn’s friend did seem to take a backseat. I also felt that, when Dawn attended college, one of the professors was extremely unprofessional… and I honestly can’t see someone getting away with revealing all the sordid details of one of their students’ pasts in the same way the sociology professor did.

I felt that Dawn came across as much more of an immature character in this book. I wasn’t sure exactly what she was trying to do for a lot of the book. While it was good to see that she did make mistakes, I felt that her comments about being self-absorbed were completely accurate.

I did feel that there wasn’t much in the way of relationship development. Maurice’s actions had no effect on me, because Dawn didn’t seem to care about him as a person… only that he was a ‘hunky reporter’.

I liked the inclusion of the news reports, though I felt that they kept reiterating what had been stated in the narration. I also really liked the song Johnny wrote targeting the tobacco company. I would have liked to see more of his interactions with Tripper… more focus on the family and other relationships.

There were some good aspects to this book, but I felt a lot of it could have been expanded upon and it should have stuck with first or third person… not both, since there was no tension in knowing the twists beforehand.