A review by moonyreadsbystarlight
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo

reflective

4.0

 I reread The Great Gatsby right before reading this and had such a fun time analyzing and seeing the parallels between them. As a retelling, I'd give it 4.5+ stars. The pacing, the detachment, some specific thematic elements were absolutely spot on. They even use some dialogue from the original. 

This is a difficult book to rate because some of the issues that I had with it honestly made a lot of sense because it's a retelling of Gatsby. I'm not sure that I really like Gatsby as a story, but I really enjoy analyzing and criticizing it. And this responded to some of the things that I thought about in my reread of Gatsby. In particular, I really love the queer elements that were added. Not just the fact that it was queer, but the way that the scenes and the relationships between the characters were done was really great. This also looked at race and racism, which was a problem that I had with Gatsby. The way that it approached it was quite realistic considering all of the context in the story. 

However, some of the issues that I had with Gatsby also showed up here. I can't fault the author for it because I think it was a good choice to make for the retelling even if it isn't in line with my preferences as a reader. There were a lot of different fantasy elements that were added to the 1920's setting. While there was a little that was explained, there was a lot that wasn't. I'm not a reader that really needs that much world-building explained to enjoy the book, but the lack of context was even distracting for me. That being said, the original also has elements like that, so this is probably just recreating that. Additionally, even if the specifics aren't elaborated in, the thematic resonance in the fantasy elements is really excellent. 

So, I have complicated feelings about this work. I wouldn't recommend it to every reader, but I had a really great time with it going from a more analytical perspective with the original in mind.     
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