REVIEW: Ink by Amanda Sun

Title: Ink (Paper Gods #1)

Author: Amanda Sun

Publication Date: June 25^th 2013

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Format: Paperback

Pages: 326

Rating: 4/5
Blurb: On the heels of a family tragedy, the last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.

Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they'll both be targets.

Katie never wanted to move to Japan—now she may not make it out of the country alive.

Review: Ever since I saw the amazing cover of this book it has been on my most-wanted list so to say I was a little excited to finally get to this book would be a massive understatement. Once I’d gotten the book I realised I knew almost nothing about the book at all- the only thing I did know was that it’s set in Japan.

I don’t know what I was really expecting but it was different. I was a little bit hesitant with the whole orphaned girl moves somewhere new thing, but I thought it was done really well. A lot of the focus was on Katie adapting to the new society she has found herself in rather than focusing too heavily on the tragedy, which was honestly much more enjoyable. I don’t know a lot about Japanese culture so it was really interesting to learn new things while Katie experienced them. I found some of things more difficult to understand than others- there are actually quite a few Japanese words within the book, though there is also a glossary at the back which I didn’t noticed until I’d finished the book. I had originally given this book five stars but after I started this review and thought about it, I decided to bring it down to four stars.

Character-wise, I didn’t completely hate Katie but there were times when I wasn’t the biggest fan of her. I can’t really explain it but there were times when she did things that seemed a little strange- maybe it’s a situation/culture thing but whatever. Tomohiro was the same sort of situation- I went from thinking he was weird, to loving him, to thinking he was weird again and hating me and then back to loving him. I don’t think there was really any chance for many of the other characters to grow- I would have really liked to see more friends and family dynamics which unfortunately lacked in this book.

The main concept of this book is brilliant and very unique. As I realised what this book was about, I really got interested in Tomo’s abilities and how that was all connected to Katie and whatnot. Without giving too much away, I liked how this was able to let their relationship develop in a more interesting way than it would have without the idea.

Probably my absolute favourite thing about Ink, was the setting. I’ve never read a book set in Japan before and it previously wasn’t really somewhere that captured my attention but after reading this book, I’ve become a little more obsessed with Japan and the Japanese culture. I think Ink did a good job of capturing the beauty- there was a part about the cherry blossoms that just absolutely took my breath away, but there was also this element of darkness and destruction that was just perfect.

Moving away from that, I just want to say before I finish that there’s a high possibility that I may try and steal the sequel before its release date in March next year.