(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).
(This review may contain spoilers).
I’d probably give this book 3.5 stars out of 5. I was intrigued by the plot of the book… and the very first scene served to draw me into the storyline really well. It was easy to care about what happened to Michael… in particular given the fact he experienced a form of bullying.
It was good to see something of the relationship between Samantha and Michael, though I would have liked to see a bit more of their history together. I felt there was a bit too much in the way of information dumping about their history and the myriad of foster homes Michael had been moved between.
Although the first scene did do a good job of drawing me into the storyline, I actually felt like it didn’t add very much to the storyline. I thought there was a lot of potential that wasn’t really followed through on.
While I did feel there were a few too many point of view characters, I did like seeing Tessa and Michael interact with each other. I felt a lot of sympathy for Tessa’s situation with her father, but there were times I felt his character was a bit of a caricature. Since I was only seeing him from Tessa’s perspective and very rarely from the perspective of other characters, it was hard to see him as having much depth.
It was interesting to see the origins of Michael’s visions and I felt they were really well-written, especially with the very first one. I also found it believable that his attempts to warn people about what was going to happen fell flat.
There was a lot of good tension, but I felt there were too many characters used for POV. There were a few nice elements of foreshadowing, but there were as many areas where backstory was summarised in the narration and I found my attention dragging.
I did like how the book ended and it was good to see how things came together. I would have liked a bit more explanation about Michael’s ability, but I cared about the characters and I would be interested in reading more books by this author in the future.
Ink of Blood 