I found this book to be much more adult than "Wicked Lovely". Melissa scores a homerun with this book and completely recommend teens and adults to read it.Melissa has a wonderful voice and a great sense of the faery world. I applaud her.

I enjoyed this book and was glad to be back into the world created by Melissa Marr. The only thing I found frustrating was the ending. The story is told in multiple point of views and it jumps between three people, but the main protag is Leslie. For the climax of this book, Leslie has to make a hard choice and when she does, the readers aren't in her POV, but another's so it happens off screen and we're told about it. After all the things that happened to her, I felt cheated in not being able to...

Dark as fooooook, but man, I love Marr's writing style, and her imagination is unbelievable--the creatures in her world are just so fascinating. Love it.

Reviewed by: Rabid ReadsHow do I love Bad Boys? Let me count the ways:1. Okay, so I don't actually have reasons, I just love them. 2. But I should get an A for effort, b/c I sat here and thought about it for a good long while. Iriel. GAH. Even his name is HOT.The Dark Court thrives on chaos and Iriel is its King. His Fae are the natural balance to the restraint and order found in the High Court, but ever since Keenan found his Summer Queen and Beira (the Winter Queen)'s reign of terror ended, hi...

Wicked Lovely, Melissa Marr's first novel, was on my Best of 2007 list and I've been very excited about the sequel, Ink Exchange. The storyline follows Aislinn's friend Leslie. Leslie is surrounded by a fog of secrets and unable to break through the fog because of something that happened to her while Aislinn was caught up in her own set of the tumultuous events in Wicked Lovely. The gulf between the two girls only grows wider as they find themselves unable to talk about how they have each bee

So, I gave Marr another try. I didn't like "Wicked Lovely" that much, but was told "Ink Exchange" was better. In some ways, it was.For one, Leslie as a protagonist is more interesting than Aislinn. There is definitely more depth to her and although I don't get that whole idea of a tattoo being able to free you of your troubles, to liberate you, make you stronger, Marr makes Leslie relatively easy to understand. Again, there are interesting ideas about faery lore that I would like to know more ab...

I'm not really sure what to say about this book. It disturbs me that the protagonist, Leslie, who has survived a horrible sexual assault is, by the end of the book, repeatedly used both emotionally and sexually for weeks by the Dark Court king. Yet we're supposed to think this is a healing thing because her proximity to the Dark King feels so good that she forgets everything except being with him. But she wouldn't need him or feel anything toward him were it not for the tattoo using his blood th...

I didn't like the first one, Wicked Lovely, so I don't know why I read the second one, other than I wanted to give the author a second chance...The teen librarian where I work told me that the teens are eating these books up, but I can only figure that the appeal is the fact that teenagers are being picked to be fairy queens; I don't get it.These books are badly written, the world the characters inhabit is undeveloped, and the author spends too much time on the build up only to leave us with hur...

Ink Exchange is the companion novel to Wicked Lovely, which basically means that it is not the sequel to Wicked Lovely, but is still set in the same world and has many of the same characters as Wicked Lovely. Personally, I like Ink Exchange better than I did Wicked Lovely. To be fair, WL was one of the first fae novels that I’d read, along with the Holly Black series, so I was just getting to know about the glamours and the sight and all that fae lingo. Ink Exchange is definitely the darker nove...

Bullet Review:In some ways better than "Wicked Lovely", in some ways worse. Leslie is a way cooler character than Aislinn, and I like her struggles AND the choice she makes at the end. On the other hand, super-emo Faerie boy Niall made me laugh at how emo he was while Irial makes feminist me rage. I'm also not happy how violence and possession are mistaken for romantic intentions.2.5 stars graciously rounded to 3 (mostly because of Leslie and her final choice). While this is an OK series, it's d...

3 & ½ starsI wanted to give the prequel to this book Wicked Lovely 3 & ½ stars but I opted for 4 stars in the end because of the cute little excerpts that Marr included at the start of the chapters about fae folklore. I found them charming. Unfortunately those little quotes were not included in Ink Exchange. I thought that omitting these took from the atmosphere of the book. Should something like that had been included, I would have easily given this one 4 stars as well.I wanted to like this boo...

This book surprised me (and not in a good way). Perhaps because I didn't feel as many dark undertones in the first book, Wicked Lovely, I expected this work to be an entertaining, dark-ish, YA fantasy with themes of finding love, belonging, dealing with authority/power, etc. What I encountered was a disturbing novel which addresses themes of extreme violence, questionable ethics, addiction and domestic abuse in a very surface/shallow way. I made myself push through to the end, even when I realiz...

Welcome back to the world first created by Melissa Marr for Wicked Lovely. A world where faeries exist and roam among humans without their knowledge. In this companion novel to Wicked Lovely, we get to know Leslie, one of Ash’s best friends. Since Ash and Keenan defeated the Winter Queen and gained power, peace has reigned between the Summer and Winter Courts. Ash doesn’t go anywhere without guards and her closest friends are guarded too. Leslie has had a rough home life ever since her mother le...

Edit (re-read in 2018): I still love this book. I still love Irial , but I love Niall even more than I did the first go-round. I have to dock a star for the audiobook. The narrator was just “meh” for me. Leslie is such a strong character that is just BREAKS ME inside, reliving her backstory and all she’s endured. The ending of this book is so satisfying to me, because I love the prospect of a new beginning—even if I’m reading an old book. HOWEVER, the audiobook did teach me that I was pronouncin...

2014 rating: 5 stars2020 rating: 4 starsugh it feels so good to be back in the world that introduced me to YA fantasy. I have a lot of nostalgia towards this series and after rereading wicked lovely last year I was scared nostalgia would be the only thing left to enjoy with this series but melissa marr really glowed up with her second book. the fae in this series are the most genuine fae I have read in that the author is not afraid to make them brutal, cruel, manipulative, & selfish beings. not

In her essay "The Collapsible Woman", Vanessa Veselka talks about how society expects all victims of rape to break and collapse. She argues that we don't know how to deal with survivors rather than victims. But clearly Marr knows how. Like the previous book in this series, the human characters are so real, full of all the strengths and weakness that make up real teenage women. This book is particularly compelling because it deals with darker issues like rape and addiction in a real way. Marr mak...

To finish or not to finish? I'm having a hard time deciding if I want to truly finish this book. I maybe have 100 pages left and I have no desire to finish. I don't care what happens. As I'm reading this book, it gives me the feeling of what I guess it would feel like to be on drugs. The ups and downs, the darkness, the hopelessness. This book is dark and leaves me with sad ugly feelings.

Re-reading this series has been pretty eye opening. It's not good. It really isn't but I love it for nostalgic reasons while being fully aware of how ridiculous and trope-filled it is. The writing...ouch. These troubled girls finding salvation in men who are dangerous, unhealthy, and rob them of choice is not something I'm enjoying reading about. The battling seasons/courts are laughable in their structure and depth. I can't help it, I'm flying through the re-read and loving how awful they are.

Ink Exchange, by Melissa Marr, is the second book in the series Wicked Lovely. I love, love, love the faerie world Marr has created. Her attention to detail in how she creates her characters and the various faerie courts is magnificent. Leslie is a seventeen year old girl who is struggling with the events of her recent past. She attempts to claim herself back by having a tattoo inked on her back. She sees this as a tangible symbol of change… change she desperately needs. What she does not know i...

This book was very disapointing. I started it because Wicked Lovely was okay, so i decided to get the second book. Usually, i can figure out if i like an author or not based on their second book. And i just found it really...boring. Aislyn, who i'd liked, was barely in it, and it was just leslie and some new characters. It didn't seem like there was a storyline to me. I would be reading it and go, " Hey, these words sound familiar." Turns out, i was continually reading the same page over and ove...