Title: Ink
Author: Amanda Sun
Genre: Young Adult/Urban Fantasy
Number of Pages: 326
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Source: My Copy
| 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. |
This is the first Urban Fantasy book that I've been able to read since this summer and I have to admit I forgot how fun they can be when done right. I just adored this book. Despite the Insta-love in this book, I highly recommend this one because it's set in Japan and how rare is it for a YA book to be set outside the United States? I thought that the Amanda Sun dealt with culture shock and moving to a new country and how scary it can be really well. She also did a really good job of bringing Japan to life, and you can tell that she lived there from the descriptions she gave.
Ink was also refreshing because it was original in the fact that Tomohiro's power comes from drawing-the things he draws come to life. There are people after him who want to use his power for evil, but what I liked most was that the central part of this book was about finding out who you are and not giving up on those you believe in.
While I loved the intensiveness of Katie, I just wanted to shake her at times and say give it rest already! She could be quite annoying at times mainly because her relationship with Tomo was a bit eye rolling worthy. It's insta-love at it's worst, and honestly, I didn't see what she saw in her or him in her, but in the end they won me over and I think I really just liked this book because it was nice not to have a YA UF book centered around vampires, werewolves or your ordinary demons.
This was just a refreshing read, and props should be given just for the setting alone. :) I now want to go to Japan, but instead settled on watching The Ramen Girl with Brittney Murphy, which sadly, did not cure my urge to travel at all like I thought it would....
