Ink by Alice Broadway REVIEW

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Started: 11/05/18

Finished: DNF's on 19/05/1

Spoilers: Minor.

DNF'd at 248 pages. I have to be particularly disconnected from a story to give up on it and I've learnt over time that the more books I read, the less is my desire to force myself to finish something I'm not enjoying. It's a shame because this looked and sounded really special.

I've got to stop cover-buying, but it's such a pretty cover. Unfortunately, I didn't feel anything for this book. I wouldn't say I disliked it, but I certainly didn't like it either. I found it rather bland and have very little emotions for it altogether.

Characters I didn't connect to any of the characters and found them lacking in personal development and personality. They felt incredibly flimsy and I didn't care for their stories and often didn't understand their motives. Quite often, when names were mentioned, I didn't know who was being spoken of because none of them had made a big enough impression for me to remember them.

Leora was alright but I didn't know enough about her or even care most of the time. I felt like her reactions to certain things were forced and any distressing situation seemed to be perfectly placated and forgotten by the appearance of a handsome boy. Like, no, Leora. Just no.

I literally can't think of anything to write about these characters because I felt no emotion for them. I mean, even hate is an emotion, but I didn't even feel that for anybody.

Plot The idea is interesting and original but it's poorly executed. The prospect of tattoos being mandatory is sort of explained, but not really. To be honest, I was more confused and by a certain point in the book, I accepted the fact that I wasn't getting answers.

Instead of describing the plot and what I didn't like about it, I'll instead describe what I thought this book was going to be about.

In my head I pictured a community segregated by prejudice, those with Marks and those without, outcast, Blanks. When Leora's dad dies he doesn't just leave his family with memories, he leaves them secrets too. Intriguing right? Learning this, possibilities played out in my head. Her dad was a Blank sympathiser, or spy or perhaps even (gasp) the leader of the Blank community or something cool. A random Blank boy (he'd have to be beautiful of course, this is a YA book after all) would find Leora and explain everything to her; who her dad was, what he meant to the Blank community, and the truth behind the fanatical government, which would have to be a really grim truth, one that has to be stopped. From here, Leora would work as an insider for the Blanks, meeting secretly with the pretty boy Blank to feed him information. Shit would inevitably go wrong and she would get caught, or better yet, he would and she would have to rescue him from the government. Now a wanted fugitive, but also a clear outsider of the Blank community, she would have to go on the run, presumably with pretty boy Blank while they try and figure out a way of bringing down the government. If a plot twist was necessary, maybe he couldn't have been lying all along and the Blanks are actually the bad guys, and now Leora doesn't belong anywhere and has to plot to bring down the Blanks single-handedly in order to win her place back in society. Either way, that would be a book that would sufficiently interest me. And squeezing all that into 366 pages would have offered an action-packed, no-room-to-breath kind of book.

But this wasn't the plot, unfortunately. . . . moving on.

Something that didn't make sense to me: if all tattoos have to be physically inked on the skin instead of randomly appearing every time someone does something good or bad, why in hell would anyone get a bad tattoo and thus condemn their own soul? It would make more sense for the tattoos to be entirely out of a person's control and just appear. Say you commit a crime and it's a secret; why do you have to get that tattooed? Who would know? Why would you? It doesn't make any bloody sense.

And another thing, I don't understand why Leora's mentor would be Mel? Surely that should be Obel, y'know, the one who's actually teaching her to Ink. WTF has Mel got to do with it? Mel should be mentoring Isolda, not Leora.

The problem with this book is there are too many plot holes.

Setting Again, I can't say much about the setting because I don't know enough about it to form any kind of opinion. This strange world is never explained or explored. Where is it even set? I'm assuming some kind of weird Britain by the way Leora speaks, ('Mum' and not 'Mom'), or is it a completely fictional fantasy world? In which case, why is their way of life so similar to ours?

This is obviously a dystopian novel but this dystopian world is never explained. The setting is the most important character of any novel, I truly believe that. If the setting is badly developed, what chance do the characters have of thriving in it? There are too many questions attached to this story and very few are answered, most completely overlooked.

Writing Style This is very clearly a YA novel, and just the type of YA writing style I'm not keen on. It's not that the writing is bad, it's just juvenile, too simple, as if the readers won't understand big words or complex plot twists, and while we're on the topic of plot twists, I saw that twist about the stolen skin guy a mile off, as soon as the guys crime was mentioned I immediately knew it was her dad's skin, it was so obvious and I was so frustrated that it took Leora until halfway through the book to figure that out. I'm like, girl, you need to catch up, that little revelation is so 18 chapters ago.

But let's talk about the pacing. This book is very slow. Sometimes a slow-burning plot can be very effective to a story, but in this case, I needed quick and snappy, diving straight in the action, headlong into crazy, life-threatening situations. This book really dragged, to be honest. 207 pages in and I still felt like I was waiting for the main plot to start. The book only has 366 pages.

And pointless things were described in the utmost detail whilst important things like characterisation and world-building was completely neglected. I don't understand why the author spent a whole page describing Leora's process for making hot chocolate and yet the characters felt so under-developed. Oh well, at least the hot chocolate was well developed, right?

Final Impression I don't want to slate this book cause it was by no means the worst book I've ever read and I appreciate that authors put their heart and soul into their writing, but bugger me it was just so insipid, so bland, so meh.

I neither liked nor disliked it. It had no impact on me whatsoever and I'm not even sure I'll remember it in a years time, which is a shame because it's a worthy idea with great potential, but so utterly not my flavour of fantasy, of YA, of literature in general. I don't read books to feel nothing, and unfortunately, while reading this book, I felt that in abundance.