Imprinted has a dark ambience and presents several hard topics with such a precision. I appreciated the multiple P.O.V's as a tool to paint the bigger picture. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to read this ARC, it was great.

*4.5

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I kind of figured out what was going to happen halfway through the book but the writing was so engaging that I still looked forward to reading it.

The way the author incorporates the 3 POVs was clever and didn’t interrupt the flow of the book at all. Tessa’s POV is in the present and we get glimpses of her diary entries whilst her grandmother’s story is told through a letter and her mother’s story is told via an assignment given to her by her therapist.

The grandmother’s story is so heartbreaking and features a lot of domestic abuse while the mother’s story focuses on her childhood and promiscuous college life. I despised Tessa’s mother as she doesn’t appear to care for her daughter’s mental health and often times makes derogatory comments.

The author portrays OCD really well and I’m glad that Tessa came out a stronger person at the end and accepted herself.

Thank you to @netgalley and the author for the ARC! ✨

I connected with Tessa almost immediately. I have a similar relationship with my mother, so I related to everything she was going through. I found it hard to follow at times because it switched between points of view. There was too much jumping around, and the chapters were short, so I wasn’t able to invest in the characters and their story.

Although, the plot and characters were interesting, I felt the writing unfortunately let this book down. It was bland, and it repeatedly jolted me out of the story. I also didn’t really feel an emotional connection to the words.

However, the mental illness aspect was done well. The protagonist struggled with OCD and PTSD and I didn’t find it stigmatised or cliche. As I have PTSD myself, I really related to Tessa’s struggles, especially the way her family treated her because of her illness. I also liked the exploration of trauma through several generations.

Overall, there were many aspects I liked about this, but the confusing switching POVs let the book down for me.

This book has just about every dark theme you could imagine, making it perfect for those who want a challenging, gritty thriller. The topics are managed respectfully and the author presents the issues and the characters in a credible way.