Hello Rad Readers!
Right off the bat, I'm not going to lie, this hurt my heart. This book wasn't just bad, it was disappointing. I'm not usually a picky reader, but I would be doing the rad readers a great injustice if I did not drop some truth bombs about this novel. It would benefit you to read my Wicked Lovely review if you haven't already because this will make no sense to you if you haven't, or you could just read the first book --Wicked Lovely-- in general (super good, highly recommend)! I apologize, for this will not be necessarily a recommendation or non-rec of this book. I am in the midst of the series and if you are reading this then presumably so are you. So, it wouldn't make much sense to structure this as a review. This will be more of a discussion on the book and a comparison to the first book in the series that, as stated previously, I so greatly loved.
Anyways! Ink Exchange was low-key trash. The kind of bad that wasn't necessarily apparent until you are a little over half way in and notice that the themes are a little problematic, that there wasn't really anything that happened at all thus far, and that it is taking you a painfully long time to read this because it is just not interesting at all. You hate to see it.
Keenan and Aislinn were just so much more interesting of people and had so much more at steak in Wicked Lovely. They had genuine problems! Aislinn was a genuinely interesting girl with cool ideals! Their story was worth writing a book about! The book was even funny! I apologize for the many exclamation points but they are not used unjustly.
I feel like in Ink Exchange everything was so incidental. Leslie felt so shallow and bland in the way that she was written and so was Niall. I never could care about them. It was so weird how he was claiming to be so obsessed with her even though he literally had maybe three conversations with her before hand. She is in high school and he is a decades old faerie and this is not the way that Keenan and Aislinn were at all. When Aislinn found out about Keenan being a king, she didn't care. She had the sight and wanted nothing to do with the faerie world. She didn't care that he thought he loved her or that he was using his faerie magic on her. She new how she felt. She new her ideals and who she cared about. She didn't just suddenly fall head over heals for some random guy she met like everyone does in every bad book! All of the things that Aislinn didn't do, Leslie did do and it was nauseatingly repetitive and annoying. Like I said before I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just saying!!
That is a bit unfair to say though because the ending did make a lot of sense when she told both Niall and Iriel that she was just about 100% done with all of the Fae world stuff. She recognized that there was never really any true feeling that didn't have to do with some magical intervention, cursed tattoo, faerie powers, or glamours. In the end she was a smart girl but it was very VERY bothersome how easy she was manipulated in the book. I hate reading about weak minded damsel in distress characters! I declare that the book world has had enough of it to last centuries and I will be creating a petition to eliminate that theme from here on out in every work of literature every. Just kidding... kind of... ;)
I found that although Leslie had a lot more of a backstory told than Aislinn, a common misconception that I have seen in other reviews is that Leslie has more depth to her. Aislinn also had a lot of depth, it just was not a central theme of the story. Aislinn's mother was dead and get grandma was crazy and she lived seeing evil faeries and pretending not to actually be able to see them her entire freaking life!! How is that not deep? The fact of the matter is that there was just more going on in Wicked Lovely, that Aislinn's personal life problems were not a matter of concern in the grand scheme of things. In this story it was such a central focus because for a long time that was the only thing relevant to talk about in Leslie's life. With her ignorance to the faerie world, when the story was being told through her perspective she couldn't speak on anything interesting in terms of fantasy because she didn't know it was going on around her!
I will credit it to the fact that it did a great job at mixing the real world and the fantasy world. We got to learn a lot more about the Fae and Aislinn's new role in the Summer court as learning that Seth did survive after the ending of the first book. I'm not sure if I missed something at the end of Wicked Lovely that explained that he did survive, but when I read Seth's name again in Ink Exchange I was a little perplexed because I thought there should have been more explaining done for the period that happened after they defeated Baera. That was something else a little lacking in the book.
Being that Leslie was a mortal, a lot of the slow pace I chalked up to the fact that everything kind of needed to be explained in her perspective in Wicked Lovely, seeing as Aislinn already had the sight one of the greatest perks about that book was the fact that there didn't need to be any relearning done.
In terms of characters, I don't have much to say because I found them so shallow and undeveloped. Iriel- creepy, problematic, controlling, evil. Niall- BORING. Leslie- BORING.
When I picked up this novel I thought I would be reading again about an exciting fantastical world when teenagers were chosen to be Faerie queens and aren't even excited about it, or kids that live in giant train carts, and other cool stuff like that! In actuality what I picked up was a book about disturbing themes, extreme violence, poor ethics, and to top it all off... domestic abuse. Cool.
Psych... obviously.
Don't get me wrong, I think it is important to write about these topics, people need to be faced with the unfortunate truth about reality, but this was not the way to do it. This is a fantasy young adult novel about Faeries and it is trying to tackle real world problems. Being that is also focusing on a completely different plot as well, the fantastical world, it could only scrape the surface level at best.
So, no. I did not like this book. I gave it 2/5 stars on GoodReads, but I am not giving up on this series! I am going to finish the series because I know that with such an amazing first book, Melissa Marr will come out with something great again. I will ever be the optimist in the world of literature!
I advise you all do the same!
Keep it cool reader dudes,
- C8 ;)