Title: Indelible (The Twixt #1)
Author: Dawn Metcalf
Genre: YA Paranormal Romance
Age Group: Young Adult
Rating: 3 stars
Purchase: Goodreads, Amazon, B&N
Review copy provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Some things are permanent.
Indelible.
And they cannot be changed back.
Joy Malone learns this the night she sees a stranger with all-black eyes across a crowded room—right before the mystery boy tries to cut out her eye. Instead, the wound accidentally marks her as property of Indelible Ink, and this dangerous mistake thrusts Joy into an incomprehensible world—a world of monsters at the window, glowing girls on the doorstep, and a life that will never be the same.
Now, Joy must pretend to be Ink’s chosen one—his helper, his love, his something for the foreseeable future…and failure to be convincing means a painful death for them both. Swept into a world of monsters, illusion, immortal honor and revenge, Joy discovers that sometimes, there are no mistakes.
Somewhere between reality and myth lies…
THE TWIXT
I have trouble expressing my thoughts about Indelible. On the one hand, it’s totally “meh”, but on the other hand, it has this amazing concept…It just failed to execute.
Joy Malone sees a stranger with all-black eyes in a crowded room while going out with her best friend. But what she reads in the boys’ black eyes, is only malice. Seconds later, he approaches her and tries to cut out her eyes, but fails. The wound accidentally marks her as his property. And he is Indelible Ink, some kind of fae, a scribe in his world, and his marks are premanent. By marking her, he involuntarily thrusts Joy into a strange, wonderous world. All kinds of monsters try to contact her in an attempt to get through to Ink. For Joy, it’s unclear what’s going on, until Ink and his sister show up and try to explain. Her old life is forever shattered, but if she values her life, then she’ll make sure nobody ever finds out about Ink’s mistake – marking her as opposed to taking her eyes. That means they have to act like they’re together, even though Joy hates him for ruining her life…
Unfortunately, that very hate doesn’t last long, and before you very well notice it, you’re in the middle of cheesy paranormal romance story the likes of Twilight. Joy hates Ink at first, and God, she has every right to. He tried to cut her eyes out! And like that’s not bad enough, now she’s stuck as a numero uno target for paranormal creatures thanks to his failure. But she quickly forgives him in order to work together, and then, naturally, falls head over heels for him. Like it’s that easy to fall in love with the guy who had tried to cut your eyes out. Or are we supposed to forgive everything because he’s hot and has paranormal powers? Don’t think so!
The sad part is – the promise in this book was overwhelming. The writing style is very good, down-to-earth, and the pacing is spot on. The background story about scribes and marks and all that is awesome as well. But all that is overshadowed by the ever-present, making little to no sense, love affair between Ink and Joy. They literally go from not knowing each other and barely standing each other to falling head over heels within about fifty pages. Right. Color me unconvinced.
The story is also very confusing. It’s never really clear (until the end) what exactly Ink does, why his job is so important in this strange, new world Joy is part of, and what his actions in regards to Joy mean, not just for her, but for everyone. Sometimes the writing was so cryptic, or so uninteresting (make of that what you wish) that I had to reread entire paragraphs to figure out what was going on.
The entire book long I felt like an outsider, watching from outside the window and peeking into Joy and Ink’s world. Never once did I actually feel like I was inside that world.
All in all, great potential, decent story, but the relationship between the characters was unbelievable and rushed, and the story was, at times, confusing.
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