Title: Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Author: Emma Törzs

Publisher: William Morrow 2023

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 416

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf; Spooky Season

Where I Got It: Book of the Month June 2023

For generations, the Kalotay family has guarded a collection of ancient and rare books. Books that let a person walk through walls or manipulate the elements—books of magic that half-sisters Joanna and Esther have been raised to revere and protect.

All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna’s isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy. In the process, they’ll uncover a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined, and all the secrets their parents kept hidden; secrets that span centuries, continents, and even other libraries . . .

I was so very excited about this book when I bought it and then it just sat in my room for months… I finally cracked it open this Spooky Season and was ultimately disappointedly. The story and the reveals moved so slowly at times that I put the book down and would forget to pick it up. I wanted more. More movement, more growth, more magic. At times, the sisters were written and acted like they were teenagers instead of their actual ages. Their immaturity really got to me at times. I wanted to see two slightly lost women reconnecting with each other and finding a place. But they spend most of the book just flailing around. I think I might have reached my fill of incapable characters.

Next up on the TBR pile: