Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday

Happy Friday, everyone!

As has become tradition, I have a book for you!  But I am breaking from that tradition just a bit in reviewing a non-YA book!  Amazeballs, right?

This week, we have:

Chosen by Denise Grover Swank

Emma can fit her entire life in a suitcase, and frequently does so when her 5 year old son tells her “the bad men are near.”  They have gone from seedy hotel to seedy hotel for nearly the entirety of Jake’s life, and are moving on from a small town in Texas when we run into them.  As they are leaving town, a mysterious stranger, Will appears, and Jake insists he travel with them.

From then on, the majority of the story is running from location to location, staying away from the bad men, and just a little hate-sex.  Cause of course, that’s what you do when men with assault rifles are chasing you, right?

Yeah, so as I mentioned up top, this is not a YA novel, and is probably best for 13+.  The sex scenes are relatively brief, and not too graphic, and so, depending on the reader, may be appropriate for teenaged readers.

However, it probably won’t be a problem, because I found this book a bit tedious.  It read like a fanfic whose writer had the technique, but not style.  You could practically see the plot points being checked off as the story went on.  Meet character, conflict, meet another character, backstory, move to new location, conflict, etcetera. 

It also felt like a reset button was being pushed after each conversation the two leads had, right up until the last third of the novel, when they transformed into two completely separate characters.  In the beginning, they would fight, Emma would concede the point, then two minutes later they would have the exact same fight, with the exact same outcome over and over, ad nauseum, until you wanted to punch them both in the face.

This book was very fast paced, and the bad guys were interesting—you wanted to know the whys of the story—but the character development was lacking, and the novice writing style really took away from the story as a whole.

I would not recommend buying this book, but if you come across it for free in the Kindle library, it’s a quick read that will entertain if you can get over the shortcomings.

2/5 messiah children