The Marked Girl
Author: Lindsey Klingele
Grade: B/B-
Liv is a young foster girl trying to make it through summer in LA. Cedric and his friends are also trying to survive LA with the added problem of having arrived in the city through a portal from their medieval like land. Now they have to escape the monsters on their tail and find the scrolls that will get them back home.
Early on in this one I got that old sense of, “Should be a show on the CW…” and that never really left. (Funny that Klingele did work on television.)
It’s not that this book didn’t have it’s moments. There was some cute fish out of water stuff- which is one of the things I was looking for- and I thought the world and the system/use of magic was well thought out. But overall I could guess 95% of the things that were going to happen in this book. (I was actually only wrong with one and I’m questioning where she’s going with that one in all honesty.)
I wasn’t big on Liv or Cedric either. There was nothing really wrong with them but it often felt like everything was falling into Liv’s lap even as her life was falling apart. The romance was of course all fast heartbeats, touches full of energy and things along that line. I did like how that was handled at the end but the real problem was I just didn’t care.
I have to admit I preferred some of the secondary characters over them especially Merek. Although I’d put money on where his stories going to go right now.
It’s the first book in a series and I really wanted to love it. Magic system- good. Story- good. Idea- interesting. But in the end I think my biggest problem with the book was that the characters (especially Liv and Cedric) just didn’t do that much for me and it was very predictable.
Recommend: I’d say this would be a good beach read. But otherwise I’d wait to see the reviews on the next book before giving it a go.