The Aftermath of Being a Hero
Chosen Ones
Veronica Roth
Many thanks to Netgalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for sending me an ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review! #Netgalley #ChosenOnes
This is my first Veronica Roth title, and it thoroughly swept me away!
Sloane and her four friends were chosen as teenagers to battle an ominous and powerful evil, because of a prophecy. They succeed, but at a great cost to themselves. This book picks up years after the final battle, and examines things you never see in chosen one narratives: the aftermath, including PTSD, addiction, and generally not knowing how to fit in the world when you don't need to hero anymore. This unique lens was enough to keep me hooked, but then! Maybe the Dark One isn't defeated after all? Suddenly, the book takes a very scifi twist (I won't spoil it), and the pace picks up to a breakneck speed. Sloane and her friend family of chosen ones have to hero again, and they aren't sure how to succeed, or even who the villains are.
Things I loved
-Sloane! I feel like we often don't get genuinely salty, tough, flawed, destructive heroines. They always have a secret "heart of gold" or marshmallow-y inside. Sloane does not have a gooey center (which is specifically talked about and emphasized in the best possible way early in the book). Sloane has had a really hard life, and has needed to be strong, violent, solitary to succeed as a chosen one; how is she supposed to suddenly be "normal" now that the fighting is done? She can't, so we get to enjoy her deliciously dark humor as she rejects normality.
- The romantic lead! I cannot say much about them, as their identity is part of the delicious twisty-ness of this book, but this character stole my heart, and I am SO excited that there is going to be a sequel, just so I can hang out with them more.
- The unique take on zombies! This was a version of undead I hadn't encountered before and I loved it.
- The ending! It took anything I had a complaint about earlier in the book (see below) and tied it up brilliantly, in a way that I didn't see coming. For the first two thirds of the book, I liked the story, but the last third solidified my feelings into love!
Things that were less good…
-For the first 2/3 of the book, the generic, all powerful, mysterious evil really annoyed me. It felt like shorthand for every big bad in every YA novel ever. However, I now think that was on purpose, maybe? Since the author was riffing on chosen one stories? And the end of the book gave the villain specificity that I really appreciated.
- The government documents and news articles sprinkled throughout the story. I totally get that they are intended to give background and context without info-dumping in the main text, but they took me out of the flow of the plot.
Overall, the Chosen Ones is a really fun, dark, exciting read, especially for folks who wonder about the aftermath of triumphant battles against evil.
