September 9, 2015 – Amanda's Book Nook

✮✮✮ Star Rating

Birthmarked wasn’t bad it was just slow and hard to stay with. I did enjoy the multitude of unusual words that I had to look up because I had never seen them before. The author did well with describing the thought with new words so that I could infer what it meant but I love words and looking up for my personal library is great! I did not feel Leon grew very much in the story. He just seemed a hit and miss character. He would come into the picture and you could see how his upbringing strongly limited his ability to complete an individual thought for himself. This is the only real struggle I see in him until the end where he had to believe in Gaia or everything he had gone through would be for nothing. Gaia was a watery character. I couldn’t quite determine if she was supposed to be portrayed as strong or if she was a “coming of age” character. Many of the characters introduced could have been played up and made the story more interesting. Myrna could have been a great strong female character that could have strengthened the lead character. I really disliked the ending. I felt like there was no possibility for a sequel but felt like the author got tired of writing so she just ended the story. Maybe he couldn’t get the ending to feel comfortable so she left it dangling. I prefer nice neat endings wrapped up with a ribbon unless it is obvious that there will be a sequel. Nothing screamed sequel, just a dead-end to me.