Carrier of the Mark by Leigh Fallon + ARC Giveaway (CLOSED)

#1 in the Carrier series
Published October 4, 2011 by HarperTeen - ARC
3 Stars
DAC 2011

Goodreads Review

Their love was meant to be.

When Megan Rosenberg moves to Ireland, everything in her life seems to fall into place. After growing up in America, she's surprised to find herself feeling at home in her new school. She connects with a group of friends, and she is instantly drawn to darkly handsome Adam DeRís.

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.

Review:  I'm sad to say I came away from this book pretty disappointed.  There was a lot of hype around this book so when I received an ARC I thought I was in for an interesting and unique read.  Instead I found myself reading yet another unoriginal paranormal romance info dump.  

The first third of the book was Twilight in Ireland.  New girl at school who makes instant friends and then fall head over heels in love with a guy who treats her like smelly garbage.  The middle of the book is insta-love and a massive info dump.  Seriously page after page of "oh you must be confused, here's tons of information about our secret powers.  Come back tomorrow for more and more pages of information".  I didn't think it was well written at all, and there was a lot of potential for Megan to discover this information in much more interesting ways, not just being told in one big conversation.  And then because this magical family decides they can trust Megan, the boy who was treating her like disgusting trash for the first 100 pages is suddenly madly in love with her.  That doesn't make any sense!  

The final third of the book we read about all of this drama about why Megan and Adam can'tbe together and how their love may not even be real, but just their powers being drawn together.  I actually really liked that idea and I hoped the book would explore this more, but pretty much the characters went "Nope, we're actually in love" and that was the end of it.  The whole mythology behind their powers was very weird too. It wasn't explained well and had an awkward incestual tone lurking around it which I just couldn't get over.


There were some good parts though.  I really enjoyed the descriptions of Ireland.  I've never been there so it was fun to read about the towns and the marina.  The setting was very well described and very interesting to read.  I also thought there were some cute moments between Adam and Megan.  I liked the small moments when they weren't acting like their love was this magical destiny and were just joking around.  The book only got bad when it started to take itself too seriously.


Overall Carrier of the Mark had an interesting premise, but fell far short of my expectations.  It seemed like a weak mashup of Twilight and any book series with elemental powers such as House of Night or Vampire Academy.  

Congratulations to angelface0911 on youtube, the winner of the giveaway!