Scar (Skin Books, book 3)

By Alice Broadway

Blurb: 
INK taught Leora that all was not what it seems on the surface.
SPARK taught her that there are two sides to every story.
Now Leora has had enough of lessons - she wants to make her own story.

The explosive finale to the best-selling INK trilogy sees Leora struggling to reconcile her past and her future - and recognising that there may be no easy answers.

Review: 
I’m sad to say that I didn’t enjoy this book as much as the previous two. That doesn’t make this book bad, my main disappointment is with the ending which made me not give it a matching rating. I’ll go into more detail about the ending in the spoiler section. For now, I’ll talk about the none spoilers of the book.

First small change I noticed in this book is that the page breaks in the book had changed from a butterfly to a fox. Not a big change, just liked the butterflies better and wasn’t sure why this change was made.

A problem with this book that I didn’t find in the other two books is that there were a few mistakes, mainly grammar errors. Such as the use of speech marks or the lack of use of speech marks. It did have fewer mistakes, the more I read. But the publisher should have  took more special care with that. Page 193 had some random ink splodges, I guess from the creation of the chapter header. It was just a bit unprofessional.

Going into this book, I was aware that there would be a lack of story chapters as there wasn’t really any more stories to tell. There was the odd one and to compensate the dream sections were bigger. But I did miss those story chapters.

I don’t usually have a least favourite character but in this series I do. That is Veirity. I didn’t like her when she was friends with Leora, liked her even less when they fell out and then disliked her even more when they rekindle their friendship. I just thought she wasn’t a good role model for friendship.

*SPOILERS*

Seb a character we saw only in book 1 prior had made a good reappearance. I thought he was going to have a bigger role in the series, but I’m least happy he wasn’t forgotten about. Seb was basically helping Leora’s mother out while Leora was captured. 

One of the storylines I found really fitting was the return of Leora’s father’s skin book. Mel had found the real version of his book and gave it to Leora. Leora then gave it to her mother. The best moment was when her mother threw the actual book into the fire. I really enjoyed that, it was a really powerful scene.

A scene I really loved was the attempt to flay Leora. I had a feeling that Leora would be sentenced to death, I wasn’t sure if she would live or die but I did sense a public execution attempt. However, didn’t expect it to be as brutal as it was. The mayor was trying to flay Leora to death just like what happened in The Saint story. This is one of the recurring things I appreciate about Alice Broadway books. How she turns the expected storyline into something much better. She makes the expected, unexpected and I love it. 

There was however a few things I didn’t like. Such as the reveal of how the Mayor survived. I had so many ideas in my head but not one as basic as the truth. He just had an armoured vest on. I wanted something with a bit more umph. 

The ending was abrupt. We had a fire, then it skips a year later and Leora is feeling better but life is still a mess for everyone. How is that a final ending? The book was the smallest in the series, so she could have written the same amount as the others to achieve the right ending. For a series finale, it should have been more.

I think my main problem with the ending is that it felt unfinished. There were so many unanswered questions. Such as will there be peace? Why did Leora and the blank baby have marks that were naturally created? Storylines that went nowhere.

I do love this series, but this book is the weakest and for that I can’t give it 5 stars.

Rating: 4 runes out of 5 

Series Rating: 4.5 runes out of 5 

written by Lauren