This is the second book I have read by Katharyn Blair and although I had loved The Beckoning Shadow, I really didn't enjoy it that much Unchosen.
It wasn't that the book was bad per se, on the contrary, I really liked the premises and the whole setting of the story. I am a rather big fan of dystopian/ apocalyptic/ post-apocalyptic books. However, there were a few things that put me off quite from the start.
But, let's start by saying a few words about the plot. The story is about a young girl who is trying to save the world and those she loves while trying to figure out her own identity. It sounds awesome, doesn't it? Well, it could have been but somewhere in the middle I just couldn't stand her POV!
Charlotte is a young girl, she must be under 20 as her voice is quite "immature" and young. She lives in a world where a terrible disease has taken over the population, turning them into flesh-eating "monsters". In order to get infected, you need to look directly into their eyes. You can have eye contact with them but mainly by looking through a glass/ or mirror. Charlotte is trying to survive in this world along with her 2 sisters, Harlow and Vanessa. Her sisters, as we are thoroughly and repeatedly explained are just amazing, they are bright like shiny stars, while Charlotte is nothing special. She is the middle kid, living in the shadow of her leader-born older sister and preceding the talented younger sister, who happens not only to be a successful gymnast but the CHOSEN ONE in this apocalyptic world.
As you will probably figure out early on in the book, Charlotte has a HUGE inferiority syndrome, and I don't think it was her parents' fault, rather than her own. Charlotte herself had always viewed herself as the lacking one, the faulty, the incompetent. She created for herself this weak/ victim like persona and used it as an excuse for her actions and behaviors. This was one of the things that really irritated me as someone would suggest that we would do this character development slowly happening where finally she would figure out her own identity. Alas, it didn't happen. She definitely grows some balls but she is still 100% the little whinny girl up to the end of the story.
Another thing and this one was a major thing in the book, it was that this book was advertised as this feminist kind of book, and yet Charlotte's actions are mainly driven by her "love"/ lust over two boys in the book. You see Charlotte had been in love with her best friend, Dean, who also happened to be her older sister's boyfriend. Another source of psychological/ inferiority complex, as the boy loved her sister and not her.
So, we hear constantly her mopping over Dean, you would expect that she would get over him after some years, but not her, she was this wallflower always waiting for him to notice her, regardless that Dean and Harlow, her sister, were madly in love.
So, although Charlotte takes over the CHOSEN ONE'S identity in order supposedly to save her younger sister, her whole adventure after that point is to save Dean who was also captured. She made everyone believe that she knew where the key to their survival was but, in reality, she was just leading them on a goose chase to find, Dean.
Let's talk about obsessive love, here...imao!
Anyway, this whole love and devotion last up to the point where another HOT and MANLY boy enters in the story, and then Charlotte starts lusting over him. Dean suddenly is in the past and he was nothing more than an innocent love.
I am not gonna say much more apart from the fact that I was PISSED that her whole motivation was centered around boys. She never stopped to think about what had happened to her sisters, she never wanted to help to save the world or her missing parents. Everything was done for the men in her life to be safe which showed to me how immature and silly Charlotte was. Priorities, girl, priorities!
You see you cannot want to have this KICK-ASS, STRONG, and INDEPENDENT protagonist only at the last 5% of the book, in the rest of the book to have a girl like CHARLOTTE, and then expect me to love the story. Nope, I am sorry!
In general, if you want something light to read, give it a try, you might like Charlotte but for me, she wasn't it!
Коментари