Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Griffin for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Release Date: November 17th, 2020
464 Pages
Synopsis: From New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry, comes a standalone supernatural thriller Ink, about a memory thief who feeds on the most precious of dreams.
Tattoo artist, Patty Cakes has her dead daughter’s face tattooed on the back of her hand. Day by day it begins to fade, taking with it all of Patty’s memories of her daughter. All she’s left with is the certain knowledge she has forgotten her lost child. The awareness of that loss is tearing her apart.
Monk Addison is a private investigator whose skin is covered with the tattooed faces of murder victims. He is a predator who hunts for killers, and the ghosts of all those dead people haunt his life. Some of those faces have begun to fade too, destroying the very souls of the dead.
All through the town of Pine Deep, people are having their most precious memories stolen. The monster seems to target the lonely, the disenfranchised, the people who need memories to anchor them to this world.
Something is out there. Something cruel and evil is feeding on the memories, erasing them from the hearts and minds of people like Patty and Monk and others.
Ink is the story of a few lonely, damaged people hunting for a memory thief. When all you have are memories, there is no greater horror than forgetting.
Argh! I finished Ink three days ago and I’m still trying to sort out my feelings. This is a follow-up to Maberry’s Pine Deep trilogy which I LOVED, but it can be read as a standalone. Let’s get what I didn’t like out of the way. First, I’m not a prude, but I thought there were way too many sex scenes, and the ones with the villain masturbating while he fed on his victims’ memories were particularly unnecessary and turned my stomach. Also, too many characters and POVs. Really, the only two I wound up caring about were Monk and Patty. And finally, the pace was too drawn out and there wasn’t enough action until the final few chapters. I loved the actual storyline with this psychic vampire feeding on people’s memories through their tattoos. I also really connected with Patty and Monk and their traumatic backstories. This is a spoiler, but I feel it’s necessary, Patty’s little daughter was gang raped and killed, and while this is mainly talked about off scene, I think it could be a possible trigger for some readers. The last few chapters were everything I had hoped the rest of the book would be. So for me, Ink wasn’t bad, but it was a bit of a disappointment. Most reviewers however are loving it, so if you’re intrigued don’t let my review dissuade you from reading it. Although the events in Ink take place years after the ones that occurred in Maberry’s Pine Deep trilogy, I do recommend you read it not only because it’s one of my favorite horror series, but also because there are numerous vague references to the “Trouble,” in this book and there’s no explanation until after the halfway point, which I think could be annoying to some readers not familiar with the previous books.
