Margaret M Lin

The Underground Girl Margaret M Lin

Sylvie Baker's memories hit a wall beyond three months ago. That was when she was discovered buried in the charred rubble of an apartment complex fire. She wonders if her past could possibly have been as strange as her three-month old life has been to date. As it is, she's not quite sure she's sane. To begin with, she's periodically transported to a world of caves, black-tree forests, and a fairytale castle. She keeps finding little moonstones there, only to find herself back in "reality," in Portland, Oregon, again. Then there's the part where she seems to be able to heal people with the touch of her hand - though at a cost. Her brief life gets more complicated when she comes across another person in that other world, a man. Then her two worlds collide when she also finds him in Portland. He and others, who call themselves Scholars, seem bent on exploiting her "magical" powers. That is, assuming she's not imagining it all. As Sylvie tries to solve the mystery of herself - and stay alive - she may discover that reality will need some serious redefining. She may find that she's part of a greater mystery that ties her to the secretive island nation of Aur, which changed the rules of reality long ago. She may also fall in love along the way. Welcome to the Exiles of Aur series, paranormal romances that tell the stories of loners and lost souls from the mysterious Aur, a place of myth, magic, and monsters. The Underground Girl is the sixth book in the sequence. Like all the books, it can be read as a stand-alone, though the books chronologically follow each other, and often characters from earlier books make subsequent appearances. This is an angsty but clean romance with mild graphic violence and little to no profanity.