Ink by Alice Broadway, 2018

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Every action, every deed, every significant moment is tattooed on your skin for ever. When Leora's father dies, she is determined to see her father remembered forever. She knows he deserves to have all his tattoos removed and made into a Skin Book to stand as a record of his good life. But when she discovers that his ink has been edited and his book is incomplete, she wonders whether she ever knew him at all.

(366 pages)

First, let's just deal with the fact that the idea of Skin Books and tattoos are really, really weird. In this society, people literally get all important parts of their lives tattooed onto their bodies. When they die, their corpses are literally skinned and the skin with tattoos on it gets put into a book and given to their family. Leora's house literally has a bookshelf just full of the Skin Books of her various ancestors. That's right, the books with their literal dried skin.

*Shudders*

So gross. But putting aside the ickiness (and my personal aversion to ever getting a tattoo myself), I think the world built in Ink is absolutely fascinating. There's a beauty in the way people use tattoos to literally slice the most important facts about themselves–and their favorite memories and the key aspects of their personalities–into their skin. There are people whose entire career consists of studying tattoos and giving new ones to people. This is a job, but there are also some people–like Leora and her mother–who can look at people's tattoos and discern the story behind them. It's a beautiful thought, this idea of being completely open and honest and almost literally "wearing your heart on your sleeve." The lore behind the practice is also very beautiful, with several semi-fictionalized tales from their past which were very reminiscent of our fairy tales.

Where things get hard, though, is where the government is concerned. It's extremely strict and uptight, and it requires all people to get certain tattoos. All people who don't get tattoos are considered to be dangerous (partly because of the old stories and partly because they "hide" themselves by not sharing their secrets on their skin), but the leaders of the government crackdown more and more on weeding out not just them but also anyone who sympathized with or helped the,.

As the story goes by, Leora learns more and more about the world she lives in and the government's actions. She also learns some things about her father's history and her own past. It's all very interesting, and I'm very excited to see where the story goes from here in the sequel, but the real focus of Ink was on introducing both Leora and the reader to the world and the plot of the sries.

I enjoyed the book, though the skin books definitely did creep me out a little bit.If you're interested, check it out! Let us know in the comments below what you think of it.

Disclaimer: I received an unsolicited complimentary copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.