Blog Tour: Ink is Thicker Than Water by Amy Spalding

Title: INK IS THICKER THAN WATER
Author: Amy Spalding
Pub. Date: December 3, 2013
Publisher: Entangled Teen
Pages: 320
Find it: Amazon, Barnes& Noble, Goodreads

For Kellie Brooks, family has always been a tough word to define. Combine her hippie mom and tattooist stepdad, her adopted overachieving sister, her younger half brother, and her tough-love dad, and average Kellie’s the one stuck in the middle, overlooked and impermanent. When Kellie’s sister finally meets her birth mother and her best friend starts hanging with a cooler crowd, the feeling only grows stronger.

But then she reconnects with Oliver, the sweet and sensitive college guy she had a near hookup with last year. Oliver is intense and attractive, and she’s sure he’s totally out of her league. But as she discovers that maybe intensity isn’t always a good thing, it’s yet another relationship she feels is spiraling out of her control.

It’ll take a new role on the school newspaper and a new job at her mom’s tattoo shop for Kellie to realize that defining herself both outside and within her family is what can finally allow her to feel permanent, just like a tattoo.

Who's Amy Spalding, you ask. Well, keep reading then :)

Amy Spalding grew up in St. Louis, but now lives in the better weather of Los Angeles. She received a B.A. in Advertising & Marketing Communications from Webster University, and currently works as the Digital Media Planner for an independent film advertising agency. Amy studied longform improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, and can be seen performing around L.A.

Photo by Jessie Weinberg.

For more about Amy be sure to read the F.A.Q.

Website/Twitter/Facebook/Goodreads

As promised, here's also the Rafflecopter giveaway widget. Sign up right away, for a chance to win a copy of this exemplary book!

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Rafflecopter Link:

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Tour Schedule:

Week One:

11/25/2013- The Bookmark Blog- Review

11/26/2013- Donnie Darko Girl- Review

11/27/2013- Reading the Best of the Best- Review

11/28/2013- She Dreams in Fiction- Review

11/29/2013- My Reading Room- Interview & Review

 

Week Two:

12/2/2013- YA Story Teller- Review

12/3/2013- LeAnn's Book Reviews- Review

12/4/2013- Bookish Things & More- Review

12/5/2013- Bookworm1858- Review

12/6/2013- The Irish Banana Review- Review

And here's my review:

Amy Spalding is a really talented writer. It was obvious from her first published work I read - The Reece Malcolm List. Her characters were lively, and her writing realistic. It's the same with Ink is Thicker Than Water.

Here we're introduced to Kellie Brooks, a girl of creative mind, who always feels like she's the odd one in her family, even though it's her sister, Sara who's the adopted one. Kellie's Dad is never satisfied by anything she accomplishes, and her Mom and step-dad are just too cheerfully supportive to be taken seriously. The only one who's always appreciated, is Sara.

But then things change. Because Sara suddenly has two pairs of parents and no one can tell which ones she wants to belong with.

In Ink, the ordeal with Sara is the eye opener to Kellie's life. Until then, even though she didn't feel normal, at least she had a family and a close friend to count on. Her life was okay, even though she hadn't quite figured out in what direction it was pointed. She was happy, and that's what mattered. Afterwards it seemed that her world had keeled over, threatening to just go upside down forever.

For a while she thought that having a relationship with this sweet and charming, but also super intense, college boy Oliver would probably fix things for her. They hung out, made out and even brought it to a different level altogether.

Kellie had a lot to deal with for a teenager. The loss of the close relationship she had with her sister, the loss of her best friend who went hanging out with the school mean girls, her Mom was beginning to fall apart at the seams... Then a truth she learned about Oliver's past came at her out of the blue, and she decided to take matters in her own hands.

She just had to deal with life and she had a plan exactly how to do it. It involved growing up and putting on her big girl panties. It involved thinking like an adult, but not a stuck up one. It involved figuring out what's truly important, what's to be a constant in her life.

Ink was a coming of age book, where change was required by the circumstances. On the surface, it seemed to be a light read, but really it had a much deeper concept. Underneath all the layers of disappointments and undesired developments, there was the maturation of a girl who was beginning to learn a few things about the world. Mainly, that not everything is what it seems. People change, relationships change, but if you're willing, you can usually make it work. And you can usually make it stick.

Just like the ink of a tattoo.

In conclusion I want to wrap it up saying that Ink was amazing in every sense of the word. And it definitely had a teen voice. Not a dumb one, where you wonder what on earth the person is thinking. But a realistically believable one. And I liked it.

My rating is 5/5 stars.