The ending is Coai

You know that excitement you get when you read the blurb of a book that seems to have it all? And the anger and disappointment you feel when it doesn't deliver?

That's exactly how I felt when I finished Ink. I mean, my expectations were knocked down a few notches after reading some reviews but it was just as disappointing because it didn't turn out to be the awesome sauce I had hoped for it to be.

So we have our girl Katie Greene who gets moved from the U.S. to Japan after her mother died to go live with her aunt. At school, she meets the brooding Yuu Tomohiro (who is obviously bad news for her) and discovers that his drawings can move and come to life. Katie's curiosity is peaked and she starts to follow Tomohiro to see what he's up to and to ask him about why his drawings can come to life.

Now, one of the main problems I had with this was that Katie felt like an obsessive stalker once she saw Tomohiro's drawings move. People around her warned that Tomohiro is dangerous and that she should stay away from him, even she said it herself that he looked like a psycho, yet she goes off following him after school and constantly keeps tabs on him. And she accepted the fact of moving drawings pretty quickly, sure she suspected it might be hallucinations but the way she kept demanding an answer from Tomohiro seemed weird and forced, because say the drawings don't actually move, wouldn't she be announcing to the world that she's gone loons?

That aside, Katie was quite annoying/whiny and a bit of an ungrateful brat with the way she treated her aunt Diane and the way she deserted her friends after she and Tomohiro became an item.

All the secondary characters weren't developed well enough and they just randomly popped up in the story when they're needed. Katie's adjustment to Japan and her exploration to the culture could've also been developed further instead of leaving the book pages for more Tomohiro.
The villain in the story is a bit of a joke and I saw him coming a mile early anyway, so if the author was going for a surprise attack it didn't work.

Now I know you're all dying to hear about Yuu Tomohiro.
In the book he is described to have copper hair and dark eyes but the face that all I could think of was Takeshi Kaneshiro.

Because let's face it, he's totally swoon worthy.

And the Tomohiro in the book? Eh....not so much. Some of the dialogues he had with Katie were cute and witty but their relationship developed way too fast, it didn't feel natural and the whole hot and cold thing he did at the start just did now work for me.

The redeeming part of the book is perhaps the mystery regarding why Tomohiro's drawings can come to life and the whole mythology around it but it never explained clearly if the drawings that come to life are literal or figurative of the imagination since they can be destroyed by destroying the artwork itself (and they're in black and white). Also, the whole ink spurting out everything was confusing because there was a scene where ink was pooling out of Tomohiro's mouth and all I could think of was why isn't he gagging? Isn't ink poisonous?

The ending to the story was pretty blah, I was kinda pissed off at Katie'
s decision in the end because she was doing whatever she felt like and didn't even think about her family's feelings. Like she could've made that decision earlier instead of at the last minute.


On a side note, the illustration in the book are very pretty, I just wish there were more of them....

Also, thank you NetGalley for sending me this book, even though I didn't quite enjoy it. :)