Marked beauty was a very intriguing read and full of great twists! Ana is an empath who finds herself thrown into a world full of secrets, mythology, romance, and evil. I enjoyed reading this book and thought the premise was very fascinating. I felt the beginning was a bit slow but it definitely picked up after about 1/3 of the way through and parts of the book were very wordy which made it a bit confusing at times. Despite these issues I hope there is a sequel written I can't wait to find out what happens next in Ana's journey! Much thanks to Netgalley and Spells & Stars Books for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for a review!

I don't read a lot of romances, which this clearly was, but even so I enjoyed this book. To give you a brief, spoiler free summary, Ana can sense the emotions and presence of other people. This makes it hard for her to be around large crowds and get close to people. Everyone blames her weirdness on the fact that her mother left her and her father when she was a child, but part of it also comes from her ability to see rifters and their dark energy. After something happens to Ana's best friend Katee, Ana is desperate to save her. The only person who might have any answers is Viktor, but she can't seem to get a straight answer out of him. Time is running out for both of them, and to survive both will need to trust the other with their life.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this in exchange for a review!

I love fantasy but I am almost always hit or miss when it comes to the romance aspect in such books but this book was great! The romance and the fantasy was blended beautiful. S.A. Larsen does such a wonderful job of painting pictures as you read. The premise of this book was original and the characters were well written.. Ana was a character hat actually grew as she learned to deal with her powers. Oh! Her powers are super awesome! The ability to see auras was a really cool idea..As a Michigan girl I do have to admit that I was thrilled that the book took place here!

Though marketed as Young Adult you can really enjoy this as an adult with no issues. I would suggest this to anyone who loves fantasy, romance and magic as this book has it all.

Release date: 17 October 2018
Author: S.A. Larsen
Publisher: Ellysian Press
Genre: Sci-Fi & Fantasy; YA
One sentence review: A neat idea, not well executed.

Short summary: A young woman can sense the emotions of those around her. After a car accident, she is saved by a young man who creates a link between them.

The premise was promising and permeated with the potential for a pretty pleasant novel. (I could not help myself.) However, I was disappointed upon reading.

The focus of this book is a love-triangle. Can we agree that a love-triangle as the central novel conflict is just not a good approach to, both, romance and conflict? Relationships are two individuals agreeing to share life; there is plenty of drama in that naturally. You don’t need a third or fourth person to establish obstacles. You really don’t.

The romance is created in a way by a bond that means the love interest owns the female lead. I don’t feel like I should elaborate further as to the issues I have with this point.

The ancient evil – the bit of the synopsis which peaked my interest (naturally) – is not sinister, dark, twisted, or evil. I need a proper villain. Give me something scary, it has had so much time to develop into a decent villainous creature or darkness or something. I felt the villain was merely determined to be kind of bad. Maybe I am just in the mood for a good grim-dark, and this complaint is due to bad timing?

While I appreciate NetGalley, Larsen, and Ellysian Press for providing a copy of this novel in exchange for a free review, I sadly did not find that I enjoyed this tale. If you enjoy a love-triangle focused story with a bit of fantasy, this is precisely your cuppa. I prefer fantasy with a dash or spattering of romance, so this one was hard for me.

I received a copy of this for a fair and honest review.  Ana is a teen with empathic power. The older she gets the more her powers develop. She is trying to figure out what caused the accident that has her friend in a coma. That is how she met Viktor and how they start their journey together. There is a bit of romance in their future. I love the duel POVs between Ana and Viktor. It allows me to see what is going on in both of their minds and what they are feeling as well as thinking.

I was drawn to this book by it's eye-catching cover and a blurb that sounded interesting. Sadly I really struggled with it, despite the interesting premise. While I felt the book had some good ideas behind it, a lot of the mythos was just "dumped" into the book with little to no real explanation or cohesive world building , leaving me confused about what was going on at several points. This wasn't helped by a somewhat clumsy writing style, the lack of flow could possibly have been improved with some tighter editing. I also failed to connect with any of the characters, which made it hard to care about what happened to any of them.
This book had potential, but it clearly was not my cup of tea.

I loved the characters and the twists and turns. At first, I thought this was going to be another "teen girl gets sucked into a whole new world she never knew existed", while there is that element it is accomplished in a way that was totally unique and like nothing I have ever read before.

What a crazy ride! Marked Beauty captured my attention in a way that forced almost all of my attention to finishing it. I'll tell ya, it drove my family nuts! This book hooked me so totally, my family had to literally yell at me to break my attention!
This YA paranormal romance deals with a kind of empath being. It's a new take on anything I've ever read about empaths (empaths are those who know, absolutely, what others are feeling). The world building was superb as a lead up, though it kinda stuttered once our main character Ana switched schools. It was still good, but it wasn't quite as good as in the beginning. Character building was great throughout the story. The romance was teasing, slow and fun.
I really enjoyed this story and think that S. A. Larsen has created a winner! I'm planning on reading the whole series, so look forward to reviews once they're all out!

A gripping tale of deep spiritual nature and love. Powerfully descriptive and entertaining. From the intriguing beginning all through to the climatic ending, it keeps readers captivated. We are left hoping for book two of the series.

Thank you to spells and Stars for the arc of this book, I enjoyed this book at the beginning but got bored about 30% in to it, i plodded on it’s an ok read not bad but not great to me.

I really wanted to like this book and I think my expectations might have been too high, because I couldn’t even bring myself to finish it. So this is my first DNF of 2018...

I couldn’t bring myself to care about the romance between Ana and Viktor and once Viktor said he “owned” Ana due to the bloodprint. This is an extremely problematic relationship and one of the main reasons I did not finish the book.

The author used existing concepts such as chakras, but then calls them energy portals... This constantly confused me as the descriptions I was reading clearly pointed to chakras, but then the author had to go and name it something else.

The book gave me nothing new and chose to revolve around a love triangle. So some of the people that read my reviews know that NOTHING irritates me more than a book that focuses solely on a love triangle and this was no exception.

The book had a lot of great ideas and some beautifully written pieces, there are even some less brilliant pieces that could easily have been fixed if the never ending run on sentences were removed.

So sadly this is a 2 star from me

*I received a copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This book has an interesting premise. The main character, Anatasia, has the ability to see people's life-forces/auras as colours, and is able to "read" people based on these colours. Ana is going about her regular life, until she is in a car crash with her best friend and nearly drowns. Enter Viktor, who saves her and creates a sort of link between them. As more is revealed about Viktor and he tries to get closer to Ana, we learn that he needs her to break a curse on him.

I really liked the idea of Ana being able to see auras or emotions. It's still a rather unique idea amongst fantasy books. I think it could have set up some really great descriptions using synesthesia, and it was interesting to see how Ana could "read" people based on them. The mention of the Realm, with its doppelgangers and faeries, hinted at a cool fantasy world.

I did find some issues with the novel:
- Essentially every girl except for Ana is seen as flirty or described disparagingly due to their stilettos or tight, short skirts. Ana, meanwhile, has no experience dating but manages to attract 3 separate guys due to her beauty and "special" nature. I personally don't enjoy this double-standard or putting down other girls because of their flirting or appearances.
- Out-dated words that no modern teenager would say: gosh, goodness, spankies-high, honkin', etc.
- So many characters with not much purpose: Kahl, Justice, Mercedes, Mace, Becca, Sara, Roxi - so many characters that had a few occurrences throughout the novel but really served no overall purpose beyond being present during exposition.
- Problematic love interest: Viktor sets up a "bloodprint" on Ana for the purpose of using her to break his curse, and at some point he says he "owns" her because of it. I don't appreciate this idea of a male character owning the female one, and it made it difficult to like Viktor as a character.
- The story of the Lynceus and Viktor's story was a bit convoluted. The mention of the Realm, the Order, the Sixth were all a bit under-developed.
- I think it was a missed opportunity not to explore the Realm more, because the mention of faeries and doppelgangers sounds much more appealing to me than Ana and Viktor staring into each other's eyes.
- Love triangle (rectangle?) between Ana's friend whom she sees as a brother (and who is literally her surrogate brother), the mysterious and hot Viktor, and some guy who appears like twice and whose biggest character trait seems to be his questionable British accent.
- The writing was sometimes clunky and confusing due to a lack of commas or other punctuation.

Overall, the novel had an interesting premise. I would recommend it to readers who haven't read many fantasy novels, and want a quick read with romance, a love interest with a shadowy past, and a determined villain.