Carrier of the Mark by Leigh Fallon

Their love was meant to be.
When Megan Rosenburg moves to Ireland, everything in her life seems to fall into place.  After growing up in America, she's surprised to find herself felling at home in her new school. She connects with a group of friends, and she is instantly drawn to darkly handsome Adam DeRis.
But Megan is about to discover that her feelings for Adam are tied to a fate that was sealed long ago--and that the passion and power that brought them together could be their ultimate destruction.

(Back of cover pitch.)




My review:
This was a hyped up read. I was excited to finally get this book because of two things: the fact it was published after inkpop (which I am on) and it sounded really cool. But after reading only the first page, I was weary of my good thoughts. I will say now that I only enjoyed two things: the setting and the idea.

Let me start by talking about the characters. For me, they were all 'meh.' Megan was developed, but she felt inconsistent in some places. She fears water, yet her first choice for somewhere to sit by herself is on a dock, with her feet dangling over water. Even I can freak out when it comes to walking on docks, because they move so easily because of the water. And then her thoughts about Adam and how she treated her friends were rather sad. She ignores nearly everyone and only thinks about Adam. All the time. Usually, I notice when my friends space out; not that hard to notice. And the fact that she's spacing out to think about Adam just doesn't make me like her. I hate how she treated her friends.

Then there's loverboy Adam. Nothing about him hooked me. I preferred Rian over Adam, but even then, I didn't know who Rian really is (which is bad because he's one of the more important characters (or at least that's what I would think)). Adam wasn't all too developed, and I didn't even know Rian. And Aine came off as an Alice. How she (and Rian) joked Adam and Meg's relationship annoyed me. They did the same thing every time.

Another thing that happened with the characters is that I would forget who's speaking, when it came to some info dumps. At one point, I thought Fionn was talking to Meg, yet it was Adam. These two boys are the ones who do the most info dumping, and it doesn't surprise me that I mixed them up.

Now for those info dumps. As I writer, I've learned to avoid info dumps. And this book is riddled with them. I wanted to skip them (and I don't remember if I did or not). There's also the fact that they were confusing. What I've learned as a student is to provide info and then explain it (like on a pretest). If Fallon had replaced the Prologue with something to do with the background to how Meg and the DeRises got their powers, it would remove some info dumping. That, or take one of them many topics later explained in one of the chapters, and use the Prologue to explain it, no matter how cliche it may have seemed. The Prologue barely caught me when I read it, which is where I should have been hooked.

Motives were also unclear for me. I didn't understand why Meg couldn't just do things; I believe I didn't understand because I didn't get what all the info dumps were trying to explain. There was just too much info that needed to get across, which is the problem with books like these.

And, now that I've gotten all the bad out, I'll talk about what I liked. I loved the setting, and I loved the idea of the book. Got to learn some mythology out of it. I love the elements, I loved the Marks, and I believe the setting was rather interesting. The whole idea, though, is what just might make me buy the next book. I'd like to see the plot (because, in reality, it didn't get interesting until the last 50 pages).

All in all, I'd rate this a two. The characters need development and I'd have liked to see more of the story, not the info.