Review: Ink

Title: Ink
Author: Amanda Sun
Series: Paper Gods
Volume: 1
Genre: Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance

Why I Read It: The concept of the drawings coming to life was interesting. Also, the cover is pretty. I do like a watercolour and ink cover. It is even on paper very similar to that used for watercolours and ink work.

A Quick Intro: When Katie Greene's mother is killed in a car accident, she unwillingly sets off to live with her aunt in Japan. She struggles with how foreign it is in addition to her grief for her mother. And as if that isn't hard enough, now her doodles are trying to kill her. The only person she can find who might have answers doesn't want to talk to her, and seems to go out of his way to treat her badly.

What I Thought: This one was alright. I don't really have many feelings about it. I feel like a lot of the plot points are forced. In any event, I wasn't huge on the romance in the book, to me it felt a little flat. Katie herself wasn't a character I could easily connect, much of the time. That said the book still had some interesting elements.

I'm curious about why Katie could influence the ink when she's not a Kami (as far as she knows... maybe something to do with her dad?). I can't really see where the story is going from here. Are there going to be other Kami introduced? There isn't that much background given into aspects of how it works.

I'm not sure yet, but I think I might just be curious enough to read the next book, though maybe I'll get it from the library or wait for it to come out on sale.

Fun Fact: As I kind of kept waxing on about the watercolour cover, I'll give a small fact about watercolour painting. When watercolour painting, two cups of wash water can be used, one to rinse the brush and another to dampen the brush with clean water before touching it to the pallet (or paint from a tube). This is originally a Japanese technique.