Review: Unblemished by Sara Ella

Unblemished by Sara Ella
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Thomas Nelson Fiction and Netgalley for providing me an advanced reader copy. This has been out for some time already so I'm not sure how much the ARC differs from the final copy.  The next book, Unraveled will be out in July.  I received an ARC of that today, so look for a review of that in the next week or so.

This book is like Alice in Wonderland meets The Mortal Instruments. Unblemished follows Eliyana or El, a girl who has lived a pretty sheltered life due to a fairly unsightly birthmark on her face and has had a rough go at it because of it. Her birthmark in one world is ugly but in another Reflection or dimension is actually a mark of something exceptional. The plot starts out with a story we've seen before, chosen one has been hidden away until her 18th birthday for her own protection, when all of a sudden crazy stuff starts happening and she has to save the world with her magic.  Oh and there are two boys and a love triangle.

In this story there is a ton of family drama, starting with the death of El's mom and things just kind of get more chaotic from there. Her best friend Joshua ends up being her guardian in both the legal and magical protector sense, and El is dragged quite literally into a world she never knew existed. The unique twist was on the magic system and the world building. I really enjoyed the aspect of the reflections, a kind of multi-dimensional world accessed through Thresholds, where each is kind of a mirror image of the other. I really liked the Callings, some of the people in the magical part of the world whether light or dark has an ability and there weren't too many.  Sometimes when the people in a book have abilities there are way to many to keep track of, this one only had 7 so it wasn't too confusing.  I did find alot of the rest of the magic system pretty confusing though.  I thought that the Verity and Void, aka light and dark, could have been explained a little better. El's whole story is based on her being tied to the Verity and saving everyone, but I'm still a little confused about the whole Verity and Void concept as it applies to the vessels and the Kisses of Infinity.

Love plays a big part in the storyline, and I was hoping that El would eventually come to love herself as she was pretty self loathing about her birthmark and the fact that Joshua wouldn't love her back for much of the book. She seemed very love sick and immature in the beginning, but eventually she kind of figured out what she needed to do. I kind of didn't like her in the beginning, she was weak and always having a tantrum, but given all she was going through I guess that was kind of acceptable. She eventually accepted her fate as the savior and grew up a bit, and I ended up liking her by the end. I liked the kind of twist at the end regarding the love triangle where both boys have equal claim, and you just don't know where either of them stand. I know who I want her to end up with and I think I know where things are heading, but I'm not sure where the story is actually going to head. I kind of like that. I'm anxious to get to the 2nd book.