(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
Ideally, I’d give this book 2.5 stars out of 5. I couldn’t honestly say that it was better than the first book. It wasn’t exactly worse… but I took off half a star due to Aimee toeing the line of a Mary Sue-like character.
I did think it was interesting to see that Damian was shown to be more of a grey character, but I felt especially disappointed in Aimee. While I could understand why she was reluctant to take that step into darkness by taking Damian’s life… I did feel that she didn’t exactly fight against the vampire who’d basically stolen her first life and caused her absolute misery.
While I did find many of the other characters interesting, I couldn’t see a reason for Marc to suddenly decide to betray Aimee. While there were hints of foreshadowing, his actions were completely out of character… and I strongly disliked Aimee’s reactions to him and Naomi, since I didn’t feel those were the actions of a strong character.
I did like the fact that there were other supernatural creatures in the book, but I was disappointed not to have the opportunity to learn more about them. I would have thought Aimee would be a good way of allowing readers to learn more about the world… but she seemed to be far too self-absorbed to want to know more about the world she’d been dragged further into.
While there were some small elements of tension in the book, I felt a lot of those weren’t really allowed to come to fruition, given the amount of telling rather than showing that went on. I also found myself hit over the head with some really obvious foreshadowing.
Because the POV kept switching (even though it was in third person), I felt there was little in the way of mystery. I would have preferred to be allowed to form my own opinions of the characters and situations, rather than being told by the main characters.
I have begun reading book three, but so far, the series hasn’t met my expectations.
Ink of Blood 