Review--Indelible by Dawn Metcalf

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

Dawn Metcalf's Indelible brings us an intriguing twist with the Fae. Simply, said, it was pretty awesome! I somehow didn't really know about this one until recently and soooo glad that I discovered it. The back description immediately got me hooked, I mean a guy with black eyes tries to cut out your eye and instead marks you...and now you have to put up a ruse together?! Yeah, if that doesn't sound addicting, I don't know what is!

After Joy gets attacked by some strange guy with all black eyes, she starts experiencing some weird things; flashes out of the corner of her injured eye, odd notes that mysteriously appear in her locker or other places, strange people coming up to her baring a message for her Ink.

It's not until Ink and his sister Inq come to her and basically explain everything. And naturally, these are the two she saw when she was attacked and it was Ink who did the "attacking". Ink and Inq are a kind of Fae, but that term doesn't get used. And these two basically mark people that they are told to, the marks aren't in the negative as far as I could tell. I think it's sort of a Fate thing, but that was one little concept I couldn't really grasp. It was just their jobs to do so. And Ink having put his mark on Joy spells trouble, for when you mark someone, you're claiming them.

Joy isn't too thrilled with this notion, but if they don't live up to the ruse that Ink wanted her and she him, then bad things will happen. So she assists him with his jobs as the notes were coming to her. But a few of them went left unanswered during her denial phase and that left a few monster like creatures unhappy.

Trying to grasp Ink and who/what he is along with the other "society" members was my hardest struggle with this book, but it didn't really deter my enjoyment, merely caused a few stumbles. As I read on, I began to understand things, but trying to explain them is just as hard for me, so apologies on that! Just know that Ink's whole world kind of collides with Joy and her life!

You pretty much know that Joy and Ink are going to fall for one another. It's practically there. Although, it does take some length of the book to get there. But I was rather surprised by how friendly Joy became with him so fast! I mean, the guy tried to blind you and you're okay with budding up to him? I know there was no choice in the matter, but her friendliness was genuine instead of forced like I sort have expected it to be.

Ink was an enjoyable character as well. He's not human, yet he's studied them for years. He's ageless, immortal and all that jazz. It was sort of endearing to watch him become more human like as the pages went on. Even in appearance for he wasn't 100% human looking to begin with. And naturally, the cause of all that is Joy and the time he spent with her. That was more heartwarming than I expected it to be despite the sort of fast romance--as I can't quite label it insta-love.

The pacing was very good! It wasn't ever really slow, and I liked how Dawn worked in some real life drama for Joy too. The problems Joy faced with her family felt very real in their presentation and the balance Joy tries to establish when things are getting heated is also real. For she must keep Ink and everything secret. For one thing, no one but her can see him. So that kind of makes things tricky as well!

The ending got to be really exciting, as a lot of action occurred. Secrets were being revealed and shock after shock was dropped! And then you aren't quite sure how things were going to turn out and it was all very heart-racing!! All in all, this was a fantastic read and I am eagerly moving on to the next one!


Overall Rating 4/5 stars