ARC Review: The Marked Girl by Lindsey Klingele

The Marked Girl by Lindsey Klingele
Genre: YA Fantasy, Adventure, Urban Fantasy, Time Travel
Published June 21st 2016 by HarperTeen
Format: eARC
Length: 400 pages

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (Los Angeles)…

When Cedric, crowned prince of Caelum, and his fellow royal friends (including his betrothed, Kat) find themselves stranded in modern-day L.A. via a magical portal and an evil traitor named Malquin, all they want to do is get home to Caelum—soon. Then they meet Liv, a filmmaker foster girl who just wants to get out of the system and on with her life. As she and Cedric bond, they’ll discover that she’s more connected to his world than they ever could’ve imagined…and that finding home is no easy task…

THE MARKED GIRL is the start of a new fantasy series, which was a solid start but didn’t excite me as much as I had hoped it would. In other words, it more so built up the characters and the world, but didn’t do much for me in the plot area.

THE MARKED GIRL follows Liv, a girl from Los Angeles. When Cedric, the prince of Caelum, and two others from the world, manage to come through a portal to Los Angeles, Liv, Cedric, and their group have to figure out Liv’s connection to Caelum and how to get Cedric back to his world. The concept was definitely interesting as I love parallel universes, and the obvious disconnect between Caelum and LA was entertaining to read, to say the least.

Told in dual POVs between Cedric and Liv, the novel presented a several characters that sparked my interest, but it didn’t go much into depth with other characters beside Cedric and Liv. Thus, I would have liked just a tad more background of the characters. I wanted to know how they could trust all these new people that were being introduced, and I wanted a good balance of history of Caelum and action in this book. An obvious problem I had with this book is that it seemed to have lots of info dumping. Hence, I felt bored at parts and skimmed few pages. Even with the info dumping, there were so many questions that I had by the end of the book. I’m definitely hoping for answers in the next installment.

Overall, this book is a solid to this new fantasy series. Although I felt this book lacked a captivating plot, it introduced the new world(s) and a few more interesting characters. I’m looking forward to the next book that I hope will fill in some gaps and really get into the plot.

Thank you to the publisher for providing this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Have you read this book yet? Are you planning to? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!