Ink Review

Ink (Paper Gods #1) by Amanda Sun

 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.

My Review:

This story is like nothing I've ever read before. Sure, there's mythology involved, but it's not Greek or Roman. So basically, I knew absolutely nothing about this book before I read it. And even though the mythology was a mystery, I still enjoyed it. It was also great reading about another culture. 

The main characters of the story, Katie and Tomohiro, weren't really as developed as I was hoping they would be by the end of the story. Kate cried a lot, for reasons I really couldn't understand. She also did things impulsively that really made me scratch my head. Tomohiro was a better character than her by far. He had this amazing story that got hidden behind a bad reputation and I could practically feel how desperate he was for something to go right in his life. Putting these two characters together didn't really help with Katie's character development, either. They had a pretty good imitation of the insta-love thing going on.

Like I mentioned earlier, I adored this plot. There was no reference for me to search my brain for like there would be with say Hades and Persephone. The world that Sun created was beautiful. It was all about elegant strokes of writing and drawings, and I wish she could have explained it a bit more because some parts were confusing. I also wish that I had a physical copy of this book because there are supposed to be pretty pictures inside, but since I read it on my Kindle, everything got chopped in half. 

All in all, this was good. I loved the world, but not so much the main character. I definitely plan on picking up a copy of this book, someday, and even the sequel down the road.

3/5 stars

*Note: I received a copy of this book to review from Netgalley. This in no way altered my opinion/review.