The Marked Girl by Lindsey Klingele
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The story was not bad, interesting. However, I had a problem with what appeared to be forced descriptions and analogies to paint a picture, smell, or other sense, which didn’t seem to fit in the story’s context.. i.e., descriptive logic errors—for example, a kiss where breath tasted like salt and smoke. Neither of the people involved in the kiss was smoking, nor was there a fire and no tears or salty pretzels to explain the salty taste. Some of these senses seem forced to be in the story, as if someone advised to add senses to the narrative description without of context of the scene. These descriptions are throughout the book, distracting you from the story as your mind tries to rationalize the moment. Hopefully, this will not occur in the next book in this tale.
The story itself was enjoyable. The idea of two worlds and a way to travel between them (with a speed-of-time-passing slowly aspect) is a trope that I enjoy reading, and I think the author did a fine job of setting it up. The main character, Liv, seems to fall for Cedric too soon and too far from just meeting someone from another world (which she eventually figures out). However, there is good tension with Cetric’s betrothed, which keeps the reader wanting to figure out how things will end up. It is a fun book to read, and it’s on the light side of fantasy but also has an intriguing (maybe somewhat rushed) romance triangle thing forming.
I think if you want a fun read in a fantasy world that is not too complex but at the same time will give you a sense of immersion into the story’s universe. I think this is a good one to choose. I originally gave this 2 stars, but after re-reading and thinking more about it, I’ve up it to 3 stars and mainly only 3 stars because of some technical issues noticed in the writing (or possibly not-so-good editing), but story-wise, it’s pretty solid.
Candles, Wine, and a Book 