A review by jkreads
Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

I picked this one up because I loved the concept of it - a decade on from the defeat of an otherworldly evil known as the Dark One, the five ‘Chosen Ones’ who were selected as children to defeat him are trying to go about their lives. I was initially hooked but somewhere about halfway along it just ran out of steam and almost fully sent me into a slump.

I initially enjoyed the structure of the story - it focused on one of the five Chosen Ones, Sloane, and was written from a third person POV which is my preferred style to read. Interspersed throughout the book were other pieces of media - journal entries from another character, quotes from books, newspaper clippings and government documents from the project to defeat the Dark One. I appreciated what the author was doing here, delivering pieces of the plot from different perspectives, however it just made the whole book feel really disjointed to me. I felt like it interrupted the flow of the narrative and a lot of the quotes and excerpts from other books felt irrelevant to me.

I really feel that had this book been structured differently, perhaps as a dual POV between Sloane and Nero, it would have flowed a little better and I would have enjoyed it a lot more.