Book Review: Blook, Ink and Fire by Ashley Mansour

Time to review another book...but let's talk about how tired I am today, yesterday was my wedding anniversary and my hubby surprised me with flowers (ha, right?) and then we went out to dinner in Boston.  I loved dinner, but what I forgot was how late dinner was and how my stupid brain still doesn't function that well. lol  We got home after 10 at night and this morning I feel like I got ran over my a truck, my head is killing me (these are the days that I realized that I'm still not 100% better from my concussion and I think to myself, when will I? AH, it's so aggregating...anyways, back to today's topic and dinner was delicious :) )


Blood, Ink and Fire by Ashley Mansour

Thank You NetGalley for this opportunity to read and review this book.

Noelle is our main character, she is from Fell, a place where reading and books are prohibited.  When kids turn 17 years old they go through Immersion, a process where doctors go into your brain and remove your ability to read and understand letters and numbers.  Fell is also monitored through Verity (wireless world), everybody has Verity at home and they are pretty much monitored 24/7.  During one of Verity's malfunction moments Noelle reads a script out of it and Fell learns that she can read it.  Her grandfather takes the blame for her and he is throw out of Fell forever, however during the raid that her grandfather is thrown away, Noelle isn't home because he went to see her best friend John.  When she finds her grandfather on the way home, he tells her what happened and both of them go to John's house for protection and the story takes off from there.

When I read about this book, it really intrigued me and I really wanted to read it but once I started to read it took me forever to get to the story or more likely the story took forever to develop it.  I fell like the world building wasn't properly developed, I wanted more to be explained about Fell and the nine sovereigns; I felt lost in it.  Every time things were explain about their surroundings it felt plain and I couldn't connect to it.

 The characters?  I already forget most of the side characters' names, why?  Because they weren't presented it that well.  At the end someone was presented as a family member and now I cannot even remember who?  Not enough time was spend on character development; even Noelle, one moment she was your typical strong female main heroine and the next she was a crying baby :( She aggravated me because of it.  Ledger, even though he was book spirit (right?) I actually liked him, for most parts, at least he was the one who kept reminding Noelle that she was the one that needed to pretty much grow up and take action because she was the reader and the only one that could save them.  I'm still not okay how they both fell in love in a few weeks...boo.

Overall, it was an okay book, towards the end it picked up and had a good ending.  I ended up giving a 3.5 stars out of 5.

XOXO,

Nelia