REVIEW: Ink by Alice Broadway

Pages: 390
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Scholastic
Genre: Fantasy
Release Date: February 2nd 2017
Buy The Book: Book Depository

Every action, every deed, every significant moment is tattooed on your skin for ever. When Leora's father dies, she is determined to see her father remembered forever. She knows he deserves to have all his tattoos removed and made into a Skin Book to stand as a record of his good life. But when she discovers that his ink has been edited and his book is incomplete, she wonders whether she ever knew him at all.

My Thoughts:
The idea behind Ink is just so intriguing, it had me curious to read it straight away. This book is set in a world where every aspect of your life is documented on your skin. Your decisions, your achievements, your mistakes, tattooed on your body for everyone to see. There is no hiding secrets in this world. Throughout this story, we follow Leora, who is about to finish school and hopefully progress onto the only career she ever wanted, being an inker. In this job, she will be in charge of tattooing important moments onto a person's skin.

After death, a person's skin is preserved in the form of a book so that their descendants can read their story. When Leora's father passes away, she discovers more to his story that she ever thought possible. Leora was a character who was torn between what she's always known to be true, what she's believed her whole life, and what she discovers after her father's death.

Whilst Leora has a love interest in this book, it was so refreshing to see that romance wasn't a main focus of the story. I feel like I say this way too often, but so many good fantasy stories end up focusing a little too much on the romance and for me, it can fall a little flat and take away from the story rather than add to it. With Leora and Oscar, I was actually rooting for them to develop their relationship further. Leora had an interesting relationship with her mother throughout the book and I enjoyed getting to see the two of them trying to work through their differences. I also appreciated Leora's wonderful friendship with Verity. Any scenes between the two of them were great and I'm excited to see more of the bond between them as the series progresses because they make a fantastic team.

This is a book that kept throwing lots of little plot twists in right until the very end. It also contained fascinating history for the world built within it. The story in Ink is something I couldn't ever imagine being a reality, but the writing made it feel so believable and makes you think but what if? The final few chapters were wild and definitely have me keen to find out what is going to happen in this world next. Ink was such a refreshing and original story and I'm excited to see what the future has in store for Leora as she develops over the course of this series. 

Alice recently wrote an awesome guest post about her research for Ink, which you can check out here!

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