This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.
My Review:Title: New Ink on Life
Author: Jennie Davids
Series: Thorn & Thistle #1
Published by: Carina Press
Release Date: May 27, 2019
Format: eARC
Pages: 336
Genres: Romance, Contemporary, LGBT
Source: NetGalley
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2019 Diversity Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2019 Monthly Motif Challenge, Lenoreo's 2019 Netgalley and Edelweiss Challenge, Lenoreo's 2019 New Release Challenge, Lenoreo's COYER Summer Hunt
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks
My rating:
Blurb:
Quiet does not equal weak…
Leaving a dependable job to apprentice as a tattoo artist was a drastic step after surviving breast cancer, but Cassie Fletcher is nearly five years cancer-free. Nearly. She’s not ready to go out on her own until she clears that all-important hurdle. Also off-limits are relationships and sex—something Cassie is sure she’ll never want again.
Struggling tattoo shop owner MJ Flores doesn’t give a damn what people think, but losing Thorn & Thistle would mean losing everything. When her former mentor’s protégé arrives at her door, MJ hires her out of obligation…at first. Cross-stitching goody-goodies are not her type, but Cassie’s business background might just get the shop back on solid footing. They strike a bargain: Cassie will enact new marketing plans and MJ will teach her to find her inner bitch.
Only when clients request to see Cassie—having learned of the beautiful, compassionate tattoos she creates for survivors and their families—does MJ realize all Cassie has endured. And as Cassie’s fears fade, she finds it harder to keep her admiration for her bad-girl boss from reawakening all she’d feared was lost.
This book is approximately 82,000 words
One-click with confidence. This title is part of the
Carina Press Romance Promise
: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!
I received a free copy through NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.
4.5 stars — I haven’t read a lot of F/F (or really many of the other flavours of LGBT besides G), and I’ve been wanting to expand my diversity reading. So I was so excited when I saw the blurb for this one and it sounded so good! You could tell it was own voices because it felt authentic. I never forgot I was reading about two women, but other than that it was just like any other romance: strife, struggle, swoony moments, frustrating moments.
I found it SOOOOO easy to connect with Cassie, b/c I have so many of her personality traits, and not necessarily the best ones. But it made it really easy for me to understand her reactions to various situations, because it was how I might react. It was really fulfilling to watch her shed those shackles of trying to get everyone to like her and embrace who she really is deep inside. I didn’t mind the backsliding, b/c it made sense, and it made her journey that much more believable.
MJ was a bit harder for me to connect with, b/c, well, just like for Cassie, MJ’s my opposite. But through all that I felt for her struggles, and I understood her defense mechanisms. I absolutely loved when she got back from her family and got the fairy tattoo, it was so symbolic. I really felt the way she started to understand how her own reactions were also sabotaging her happiness. It was fulfilling in its own right.
I loved that MJ and Cassie had so much in common, even as they were so different. They both felt rejected and discarded and not worth taking a chance on. They came at it from different directions, but the results were the same. It made their journey very gratifying, each of them learning to trust and let another person in.
Their chemistry was fantastic, the steamy scenes were like woah! I loved how they complemented one another, it all fit perfectly with the opposites attract. They each made me swoon for the other with the little gestures they would make. And they both frustrated the crap out of me when they fell into typical pitfalls that I saw coming a mile away…which does mean that some of the conflict was a bit cliche and expected, but I found that it played out with a bit more depth than I was expecting, and wasn’t trite.
I expected Cassie’s cancer, and the compassionate tattoos that were mentioned in the blurb, would come into play more, but they were kind of background/secondary. Which was a bit disappointing, b/c I was so intrigued by that, but I got so much else from their story that I really didn’t miss it.
All this to say that I will DEFINITELY be looking forward to more F/F from this author in the future. I’m excited to see whose story will be next in this series!
COYER Summer Hunt: Read a book that fits in the LGBT genre — 2 points.
When I read the blurb, I assumed Cassie’s cancer would play a big part in this book. I’m surprised to hear it didn’t. That would be disappointing. This sounds like a really great book, though. I don’t think I’ve really read any F/F either.