(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).
(This review may contain spoilers).
While I haven’t read the first book in this series, I did find this book to be really easy to follow and read, even though I would have liked to see less switching between the different first person perspectives. I found myself keeping on getting confused by which family I was reading about in which chapter.
It was good to have the opportunity to see the relationships of Jenna, Becky, Max and Matthew with their children, but I didn’t really see a lot in the way of differences in the characters. I did especially like seeing Mason, clearly accepted by his family… and I thought he was particularly sweet, particularly with his close relationship with Addy.
It would have been good to see the differences in the couples and their children. For instance, they all seemed to like Star Wars… but I wasn’t very clear on what other interests they either shared or differed in.
While it was good to see some elements of tension in this book, I did feel that a lot of them didn’t really have much of a negative effect on the characters and their relationships. There were some hints of Conner being unhappy about his father not having come home, but those weren’t really expanded upon and I felt those were glossed over quite a bit.
I felt there was quite a bit of information dumping in this book and I would have liked to see more of the other family members in the book. I did find it amusing how the parents kept getting interrupted in their attempts at being intimate… and there were some really sweet family moments at various points in the book.
I liked seeing the family at Christmas and it was cool what Max and Matthew did as their wives’ main present… even though I did feel it was a bit of a cop-out for both of them to do the same kind of present.
I would be interested in reading the first book in this series at some point in the future and also to learn more of the characters and their relationships.
Ink of Blood 