Pub. Date: July 30th, 2013
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
384 pages
Paperback
Joy Malone is blissfully unaware that the paranormal world
of The Twixt exists simultaneously to ours, until a night out leaves her with a
sliced cornea, and weird-beings approaching her with nonsensical messages.
Indelible Ink, a Scribe from The Twixt, is responsible for receiving messages
from other beings of his world, marking humans with an invisible to the human
eye signature of ownership. When Joy can see him, instead of blinding her,
eliminating her ‘sight’, he mistakenly marks her as his property. Joy and Ink
must convince Ink’s world that he intentionally claimed her, or risk their lives.
Their relationship, real or fake, is constantly tested, and through these tests
they discover that something seriously deceptive is going on within The Twixt.
The characters and their relationships, for me, was the best
part of the novel. Joy and Ink’s relationship has just the right mix of love, hate,
understanding and misunderstanding, to keep things interesting. In keeping up
appearances, Ink and Joy have to act like they are romantically together,
something that is completely unnaturally to Ink. He is not human, he does not
feel as humans do, and through their relationship Ink experiences many firsts.
From holding hands, to feeling jealous, to fearing for someone else’s safety,
Joy enlightens Ink to what caring about someone else feels like. I really
appreciated the twist of the guy experiencing the firsts, because it is not something we see often. Their relationship was very natural, with the ups
and downs that normal relationships have, which I felt made the entire novel realistic,
and that much more compelling.
The setting and the world of The Twixt was new, creative and
really interesting. But, I would have loved for more of a differentiation
between our world and that of The Twixt. We get a taste of what life in The Twixt is like through
certain characters, but how different their world is from ours (besides it’s
invisibility) is not really explained. The Twixt’s beings are like Alice in
Wonderland on crack (it’s a positive I swear). They are weird, intriguing,
dangerous, and goose bump inducing. Ink’s sister Inq was by far one of my
favorites. She helped to bridge the gap between being from The Twixt and being
human, by showing just how unaware Ink is of human-life, and helping Joy open
him up a bit. A little personal annoyance I had was the sameness of Ink and
Inq’s names! I understand that their names represent their profession as Scribes,
but reading Ink/Inq so frequently kind of drove me nuts.
Overall, Indelible
is a captivating paranormal romance. I would have liked to get to the meat of
the action quicker, but the characters in all their quirky oddity made up for
any problems I had with the pacing of the story. In the hands of a reader who
will really appreciate the quirk, I’m sure favorite novel magic will happen. I’m
honestly not sure what to expect from Book 2, I feel this worked really well as
a standalone, but if it means more Joy, Ink and Inq, I’ll happily delve back
into The Twixt.
Side note – How awesome is that cover!
Rating 7/10
*** I received a copy of this novel from the publisher to
read and honestly review. I was in no way compensated.
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