Shadow by Amanda Sun Review

Title: Shadow
Series: Paper Gods (Book 0.5)
Author: Amanda Sun
Published: June 1, 2013
Pages: 69 pages
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased

Summary (Goodreads):
Meet two teens whose worlds are about to change forever in this paranormal Young Adult novella, a prequel to Ink by debut author Amanda Sun…

Katie Greene’s worst nightmare comes true when her mother dies, and she’s devastated to learn that she will have to leave the only home she’s ever known. Desperate to find where she belongs, she must decide if she has what it takes to start a new life across the ocean.

For Yuu Tomohiro, every day is a nightmare. He struggles to control his strange ability, and keeps everyone at a distance so they won’t get hurt—even his girlfriend, Myu. At night, a shadow haunts his dreams, and a mysterious woman torments him with omens of death and destruction. But these haunting premonitions are only the beginning…

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I’ve been wanting to read the Paper Gods series by Amanda Sun since the first time I saw the beautiful cover of the first book, Ink. That one and the rest of the books are so beautiful, I just love the strokes of ink and watercolors. But anyway, I thought that before plunging into the series, I’d start off by reading the prequel novella which gives an introduction to the main characters and sets the theme of what sounds like an exciting book series.

Shadow is written in the points of view of Katie Greene and Yuu Tomohiro, and as far as this novella goes, I liked being in their shoes. Katie sounds like a great character, despite being heartbroken at the moment because of her mother’s recent death. Having nowhere else to go, she prepares herself to move to Japan and live with her aunt who’s now her legal guardian. Yuu Tomohiro, on the other hand, is a character who resides in Japan and is struggling with dangerous forces and inner demons that he can’t quite understand. He’s marked, he’s the chosen one, and those that get in his way can get terribly hurt.

By the way things are going, I imagine that Katie and Tomohiro will somehow end up having a relationship and I’m looking forward to see how that develops. Both are sweet and kind people, but they have a harder shell for the outside world to see and that might be a problem later on.

I’m still a bit confused on the whole ink and shadows threat, it’s not something that gets explained in this book, but I guess I’ll just have to read the first book to fully understand. All I know right now is that it involves nightmares and ink running as blood on people, but that’s it. I’m terribly curious though, so I might start with the first full novel in the series soon.

So overall, Shadow is a quick and enjoyable read to make the reader a bit more comfortable with the main characters before the real deal happens. It doesn’t have much action, but that wasn’t a problem for me. I liked it this way.