Book Review: Dark Mirror

TITLE: Dark Mirror
Book 1 in the Dark Mirror series
AUTHOR: M. J. Putney
PUBLISHED: 2011
CATEGORY: Young adult
GENRE: historical fiction, fantasy, time-travel
PREMISE: In a time where magic is seen as a curse among the rich, a girl is sent to a school to be cured of her magical gift.
MY REVIEW: This book has a lot going for it, I will give the author that. It's creative, the world building is interesting, some stuff is fun, and for the most part I enjoyed it. However there were a few nagging details that kept me from being in love with it.
First the main character is a huge Mary Sue. Not Bella Swan level or anything but she's a bit too perfect for my taste. I also didn't care for the tell don't show sort of writing that the author uses which brought down the book a lot in terms of quality. Also the main romance made no sense to me. They had no chemistry at all. It would have made more sense for her to end up with Jack because at least Jack was mildly interesting and they had some chemistry. I also was rather irritated at the constant villainfication of Cynthia who in my mind was far more interesting then the bland main character. Also the time travel was very random and unneccessary. Honestly, what's with all the time travel in YA lately? I don't mind it but you could at least work out a plausible way for it to happen other then oh hey look, random mirror/object that telaports people! Seriously authors, did you all watch Doctor Who one too many times and decide you wanted time travel in your books or something?
But it's still a decent enough first book and I'm a little curious about where this is going to go. I just hope the author works on the amateurish part of the book and make details more clear because I'm still a bit confused about how this magic thing even works. Very decent library read.
WHO SHOULD READ: historical fantasy fan, fans of time-travel plots
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five time traveling mirrors