Rain by Amanda Sun is the sequel to Ink. Katie Greene has decided to stay until she can sort things out with her kami friends.

Thinking she can take a breather and just enjoy being with her friends at a summer festival, things quickly get out of hand. Some of the fireworks aren't fireworks at all — they're made of ink. Her beautiful borrowed kimono is now covered in ink stains.

Rain falls into the second book in a trilogy trap. In the first book, the uninitiated main character learns the world doesn't work as first thought. Then they learn that they have special powers or abilities or a blood right to it. By the second book, the character knows the big dark secrets, is initiated into the cult or whatever, and is now trying to get back to a "normal" life.

To get everything moving towards an epic battle in the concluding volume, the second book often ends up having lots of random bad stuff, ever escalating right at the protagonists, even at the sacrifice of pacing within the book if it were to be read as a stand alone.

Katie ends up tossed from one hair raising adventure to another, all the while trying to help her friends and sort out her enemies. Reading Rain was more of a chore than Ink. Katie in this book has a lot in common with Sam from season two of Supernatural and for many of the same reasons.

I'm hoping Katie will be able to settle into her powers for the third book. ( )

Rain by Amanda Sun is the second book in the Paper Gods series and continues the story of Katie as she figures out how to live in Japan and deal with some rather strange mystical powers that have cropped up. If you haven’t read Ink, the first novel, there will be some spoilers below, though nothing too major. I can’t help but adore the magic system based on ink drawings and the view of Japan from an outsider’s perspective as Katie tries quite hard to learn how to fit in. Though I’m not very familiar with Japan’s culture and language, I thought that Rain successfully conveyed various cultural differences from the US and integrated Japanese phrases without leaving an American reader in the dust.
Note: I received Rain through Netgalley for an honest review. Some things may have changed in the final version.



Rain by Amanda Sun (Paper Gods #2)
Published by Harlequin Teen on June 24th, 2014
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Length: 304 pages
How I got my copy: NetGalley

American Katie Green has decided to stay in Japan. She's started to build a life in the city of Shizuoka, and she can't imagine leaving behind her friends, her aunt and especially Tomohiro, the guy she's fallen in love with. But her return is not as simple as she thought. She's flunking out of Japanese school and committing cultural faux pas wherever she goes. Tomohiro is also struggling—as a Kami, his connection to the ancient gods of Japan and his power to bring drawings to life have begun to spiral out of control.

When Tomo decides to stop drawing, the ink finds other ways to seep into his life—blackouts, threatening messages and the appearance of unexplained sketches. Unsure how to help Tomo, Katie turns to an unexpected source for help—Jun, her former friend and a Kami with an agenda of his own. But is Jun really the ally he claims to be? In order to save themselves, Katie and Tomohiro must unravel the truth about Tomo's dark ancestry, as well as Katie's, and confront one of the darkest gods in Japanese legend.

Strengths:
Rain extends our knowledge of the Kami world marvelously and I adored getting both more information about the myths about the kami as well as details of how the magic system works in the present day. Katie’s place in this magic system was a bit fuzzy in Ink and it was great to see that clarified and developed in Rain.
Katie and Tomo are a pretty adorable couple and now that they are both clear about their devotion to each other, they share plenty of sweet moments in Rain. It is of course not all inked butterflies and rainbows, however, and it was interesting to see how their relationship developed with the added strain of Tomo’s powers growing less controlled.
One of my favorite things about Ink were the interior illustrations and Rain continues with this added content. The chapter headers are beautiful along with illustrations based on events in the story.
I read a physical copy of Ink, so I don’t know if this is new or not, but my eARC of Rain very helpfully linked new Japanese words to the glossary in the back so that I could easily check the meaning without losing my place. Most of the time there were translations in the text as well, but it was nice to be able to quickly be sure of what the phrase means.

Weaknesses:
Katie is rather unfortunately good at causing drama. While I did generally understand her motivations, I really wanted to give her a reminder bracelet along the lines of “What would a non-dramatic person do?” >.>
Rain manages to skirt around a true love triangle, but there is definitely a relationship triangle between Jun, Tomo and Katie that really didn’t seem necessary.
While mostly Rain has translations for Japanese words in the text or glossary, there were still occasions when a word showed up again and wasn’t linked or explained. I unfortunately cannot remember all of the words that are defined, so this meant I struggled when words showed up again chapters later.

Summary:
Rain is a delightfully fun fantasy for fans of anime and Japanese myths. While the relationship drama sometimes felt like a soap opera, I still darn enjoyed this one. I’d say if you’ve read Ink, you have a pretty good idea of whether Katie’s brand of silliness is fun or annoying to you ;-). I am really excited for the third book, though, since the kami world is getting pretty crazy by the end of Rain! ( )

I had long anticipated this sequel, and I am so grateful to the publisher for allowing me to access it through Netgalley so that I could read and review the title.

That being said, my emotions feel raw and toyed with right now! There were many parts of this one that I enjoyed even more than the first one. I still felt a bit stupid because of some of the Japanese terminology, and I had to use my phone to keep looking things up as I was reading, but in a way, that felt good, too because I was learning about a new culture. The way the characters had developed and changed from Ink through the story of Rain, there was a beauty and a mystery to it, which was sometimes also very, very frightening.

This story was at once thrilling, beautiful, romantic, adventurous and horrifying. So many emotions, so little book. It really is impressive.

All of that being said, though, the last few pages were somewhat, well, irritating. The ending seemed way to open-ended. I mean, I know it is not the end of the series or anything, but I feel like instead of having any kind of closure, I am left with way more questions than the author will be able to answer in the one remaining book in the series that will be out next year. I am at once satisfied with the story, and yet very frustrated with the ending.

To have all of the turmoil, only to fall together in the end. It's the age-old story of forbidden love that we have seen over and over throughout the genre of YA Romance. It was good, but some parts of it were just too, well, expected. ( )

I had long anticipated this sequel, and I am so grateful to the publisher for allowing me to access it through Netgalley so that I could read and review the title.

That being said, my emotions feel raw and toyed with right now! There were many parts of this one that I enjoyed even more than the first one. I still felt a bit stupid because of some of the Japanese terminology, and I had to use my phone to keep looking things up as I was reading, but in a way, that felt good, too because I was learning about a new culture. The way the characters had developed and changed from Ink through the story of Rain, there was a beauty and a mystery to it, which was sometimes also very, very frightening.

This story was at once thrilling, beautiful, romantic, adventurous and horrifying. So many emotions, so little book. It really is impressive.

All of that being said, though, the last few pages were somewhat, well, irritating. The ending seemed way to open-ended. I mean, I know it is not the end of the series or anything, but I feel like instead of having any kind of closure, I am left with way more questions than the author will be able to answer in the one remaining book in the series that will be out next year. I am at once satisfied with the story, and yet very frustrated with the ending.

To have all of the turmoil, only to fall together in the end. It's the age-old story of forbidden love that we have seen over and over throughout the genre of YA Romance. It was good, but some parts of it were just too, well, expected. ( )

I wish this book had gone on for years. I loved every moment of it. Can't wait for the third book! ( )