Description from Goodreads (below) can be found here along with other reviews. Linking up with Blonde... Undercover Blonde for Book Club Friday.
Thirteen-year-old Kyra has grown up in an isolated community without questioning the fact that her father has three wives and she has twenty brothers and sisters, with two more on the way. That is, without questioning them much---if you don’t count her secret visits to the Mobile Library on Wheels to read forbidden books, or her meetings with Joshua, the boy she hopes to choose for herself instead of having a man chosen for her.
But when the Prophet decrees that she must marry her sixty-year-old uncle---who already has six wives---Kyra must make a desperate choice in the face of violence and her own fears of losing her family forever.
1. Carol Lynch Williams does a great job portraying the community. What I mean by this: she shows the good, too, not just the bad. As soon as Kyra is "chosen" to marry her uncle, as a reader you immediately start rooting for Kyra to get the aych-ee-double-hockey-sticks outta there. But the author does a great job demonstrating why exactly that's a difficult choice for Kyra.
2. I got really invested in this story. It's really easy to put yourself in the shoes of most of the characters (the non-bad guys, anyway) and wonder what you'd do in their situation. I wanted everyone to get their happy ending. I was thinking about it when I wasn't listening to it. Which covers two of the biggest most important things for me to really like a book: I have to care about the characters, and I know it's good if I can't stop thinking about it.
3. I want to know what happens next. Also a good sign.
4. For any audio-bookers out there, I think this one was particularly well read. Although they pronounced her name "Kee-rah" and I would have said "Kiy-rah."
5. I just find the whole environment and subject fascinating. A really cool peek into someone else's world that might not be real but totally could be. A very different way of living life. And a ticking time bomb of potentially having to marry an old man in your family. Yeesh.
Overall, I really liked this book. It's an easy read -- written in the voice of a 13 year old -- and a quick one. I recommend it!
Have any of you read The Chosen One? What did you think?
5 comments:
oo this sounds real neat!! going on my always-growing-to be read list :)
Going on my to read list as well!
That sounds very interesting. I will definitely check it out! Thanks for the review, dear!
I haven't seen the one before, but it does seem like one I'd enjoy. I have read a few memmoirs of girls who have escaped FLDS, and it sounds like this would be similar to those.
Sounds amazing! I haven't read it yet (I haven't been doing much "pleasure" reading recently, boo).
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