My next read to catch you up on is Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth, the author of the Divergent series and Carve the Mark Series, both huge favourites of mine. This is her first adult novel, instead of her usual YA style books.

An attempt at giving a coherent summary

The Chosen Ones story begins with the story of the characters ten years after they’ve defeated their big baddie, the Dark One. The story is told through Sloan’s point of view and begins with the ramifications on each character’s mental health ten years later, as the celebrations of the anniversary begin. The story is interspersed with news articles, radio interviews and government files from when Sloan and the other potential chosen ones were selected and trained. When something terrible happens to one of the five chosen ones, the rest gather together to mourn the loss of one of their own at the memorial site where they defeated the dark one. Here they discover there’s more to magic than they ever knew and that the Dark One might not be as dead as they thought.

I really can’t say more without huge spoilers… It’s all a little tangled until towards the end.

What did I think?

This book was so enjoyable… until the end. If you’d have asked me what I thought before I finished it, I would’ve told you that I loved it. I loved how she explores the mental health of all the characters, I loved the mixed media elements, I loved the magic system and all the intrigue. The story is great, the characters are great but the ending is so dissatisfying and so anti climatic, it really annoyed me. To the point where it changed my entire opinion of the book. Now, if you’ve read any other books by Veronica Roth, you know her endings are usual phenomenal. In fact, she scarred an entire generation of YA readers with the end of the Divergent series. So you can see why this just a bit of a let down. The ending doesn’t really tie up a lot of what’s happened, no-one gets something that even remotely resembles a happy ending, or even a resolution to their journey, it just felt so unfinished and sudden.

At the time I bought the book it was marketed as a standalone, however, a quick google search reveals that there is a book 2 listed on Goodreads but there’s no title or book cover yet. Since book one was released in April 2020, maybe I just need to be patient but I bought this believing it was a standalone book, so that might account for some of my feelings and I might be being a little unfair! Since this book starts at the end of their chosen ones journey anyway, maybe the fact that the ending of book one doesn’t even feel like a cliffhanger, or even an ending to a book at all is on purpose but it annoyed the hell out of me when I read it.

I’ll probably eat my words if/ when the second book comes out, so stay tuned for that I guess…