View source for Ink and Bone by Lisa Unger

{{infobox1
|title=Ink and Bone
|author=Lisa Unger
|reviewer=Kerry King
|genre=General Fiction 
|summary=Though something of a loner, side-lined since high-school and never one of the ''in crowd'', Finlay Montgomery is seldom alone.  Visited by people from the past, people whom others are unable to see and troubled by oracular dreams, she rarely has the simple pleasure of being alone with her thoughts.  Merri Gleason’s world is imploding.  Her husband is sleeping with a woman half his age and her daughter is missing, abducted whilst hiking with her father and brother.  Finlay Montgomery and Merri Gleason are about to get acquainted.
|rating=5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=352
|publisher=Simon and Schuster UK
|date=June 2016
|isbn=978-1471150470
|website=http://www.lisaunger.com
|video=xbb2mGUzEVQ
|cover=Unger_Ink
|aznuk=147115047X
|aznus=147115047X
}}
Finlay Montgomery, like her grandmother Eloise before her is a very powerful and gifted psychic.  Sensitive to the unseen, unheard and unknowable, she spends her days among the dead.  Visited, bothered, harassed and sometimes taunted, Finlay does her best to manage the gifts that Mother Nature has sought to bestow.  But life is not that simple and studying for your degree is testing with five other visitors in the room who are all trying to get your attention in the loudest and most distracting way possible.

Eloise Montgomery, grandmother to Finlay and herself a gifted psychic, renowned for her hand in police cases of missing people, knows only too well how it feels to spend your days seeing the unseen and hearing the unheard.  So when the visits and the dreams become too much for Finlay to handle, she flees across the country to stay with her grandmother, for who better to help Finlay unravel and understand than someone who shares her burdensome talent?

Merri Gleason’s daughter is missing; a father and kids hike-turned-nightmare where Merri’s daughter is taken and her husband and son shot and left to die, well, life really doesn’t get much worse.  So when Merri hires ex-police detective, Jones Cooper in a last ditch effort to find her missing child, Merri is willing to try anything.  Enter Finlay and Eloise and the unseen cast of many who might just have some answers to the questions that Merri is asking.

Wow!  What a plot and what a tease the blurb of this book was.  If it doesn’t make you want to pick Lisa Unger’s latest and best yet up off the shelf and run to the checkout, I don’t know what will!

To be completely honest with you, I’m a fan so I’m going to do my absolute best to be unbiased though you should know that Unger writes in a maze-like fashion.  She pulls you in, winds you around, takes you left and right and all the while making you think you are headed straight for the centre of the puzzle.  Then you come face to face with a thick hedge and no way through.  So you double back and see a right turn that you missed the first time and even though you find the centre of the maze, the sculpture that you were told would be there has either been moved or is something you weren’t expecting at all.  

Which was ''exactly'' what happened.  I was certain this novel would turn out the way I was planning and it went a whole other way altogether.  THAT is the beauty of Unger’s writing and THAT is what makes you race through the pages, sleepless and slightly insane by the final page.  It also makes you quite desperate to pick up the next book and if you’re asking, Unger can’t turn then out fast enough for my liking!

I don’t want to say any more about this brilliant read; go get it, find a quiet corner and read and read and read.  Do not disturb, do not pass Go, do not collect £200!

If you like the sound of ''Ink and Bone'', there is a long list of The Hollows stories, just for starters and Lisa Unger has been busy plying her trade generally, so there is no shortage of her novels.  If, perchance you like your supernatural thrillers to have a twist of horror, then we at Bookbag think you may also like to take a look at [[The String Diaries by Stephen Lloyd Jones]] which we gave a 6 out of 5 and actually couldn’t put it down – or sleep.  For weeks.  If you don’t want to be scared silly but you like your books to keep that slightly supernatural edge, we really enjoyed [[The Astrologer's Daughter by Rebecca Lim]] which is actually a Young Adult work of fiction, but I am no such thing and I utterly loved it.

Our thanks as ever go to the kind folks at Simon and Schuster for sending this copy to Bookbag for review.

{{toptentext|list=Top Ten Crime Novels 2016}}

{{toptentext|list=Top Ten General Fiction Books of 2016}}

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[[Category:Crime]]