Ink of Blood

(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).

(This review may contain spoilers).

While there wasn’t much of a blurb when I entered to win a copy of this book, I was pulled in by the front cover and I was quite excited when I won a copy of this book.

I didn’t, however, feel that this book was as good as it could have been. For most of the storyline, Anna was a very unsympathetic character. The beginning started off really well, but there was very little in the way of tension… and Anna’s assumption that every male character fancied her just really irritated me, more so because it apparently turned out to be true.

While there was a lot of potential in this book, I felt that Anna’s reluctance to go to the police was a huge mistake on her part. While it was good to see that the police didn’t do any victim blaming, I did feel that she came across as particularly juvenile, with the ‘nothing can hurt me’ attitude often seen in adrenaline junkies.

I found it very hard to connect emotionally with many of the secondary characters, since so much of the book was spent summarising any interactions Anna had. The encounter where she instigated things with the Dior Man came across as very surreal and I’d actually thought the book would take a completely different turn then. I was very disappointed to find it went down the normal route for these kinds of books.

I did like Bell and Michael as characters, but I would have liked to see more of them. When Anna described Bell as her family, I couldn’t see it. There was so little time spent on any of her friends, I actually found it hard to see Anna as having much of a social life.

There was something about this book that left kind of a bad taste in my mouth and I think it was mainly the first encounter, which had no negative consequences. I was left with the impression that it was totally okay… and it really isn’t.

I loved Wispa in the book, but she was probably the only character I did feel an emotional connection to. It would have been good if I’d felt the same attachment to her owner.