Buy The Chosen One
Special: $7.73 (Regular price: $8.99)
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Format: Paperback
Reviewer: Melissa on August 11, 2011
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
In The Chosen One, there is a 13-year-old girl named Kyra, who has been raised in an isolated polygamist community. She’s never questioned why her father has three wives and 21 children. At least not if you don’t count her late night meetings with Joshua, the boy she hopes to marry or her afternoon visits to a mobile library to read books that were forbidden by the Prophet. However, when the Prophet announces that she must become the 7th wife to someone, who is not only 60 years old, but also her uncle, she must make the impossible decision in the face of losing her family and the constant threat of violence.
Since I began YABookShelf.com, I’ve heard a lot of buzz about Carol Lynch Williams and both her prose and verse novels. After reading her 2009 novel, The Chosen One, I understand why. It’s a novel that, at times, will send chills to the very core of your being, and at others, will have you cheering on Kyra and praying for her safety. But above and beyond everything will be the need to keep reading and see how it all turns out.
Some of the things I love about Williams’ writing are that she weaves the past into Kyra’s present in a seamless way, but also that Kyra’s interactions with other family members highlights the differences between her time and that of previous generations. While it would be simple to write a narrative that condemns the polygamist community as a whole, Wiliams doesn’t take the wasy way out. Sure, life on the compound is difficult in the present time that Kyra’s growing up in, a time where young girls are “saved” for elderly men and young boys are beaten and kicked out of the community. But things weren’t always this way: Kyra’s own father was a young man when he marries each of his three young wives, and her mother recounts her own childhood as one in which the community allowed greater freedoms than it presently does. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Williams is pining for a return to the earlier times either as some abuses occurred then too, but rather she’s trying to show a realistic and authentic juxtaposition of the two periods to show the deepening corruption as well as the possibility of hope that those who are being abused can get away from their abusers.
If you are a reader who is concerned about the lack of protagonists who read in today’s YA lit, The Chosen One is a book you can turn to for a reprieve. Not only does Kyra read fiction alone in the security of her tree, but also she does so in spite of the risk to her personal safety. You see, the only book she’s allowed to read is The Bible, but that doesn’t stop her from reading books as diverse as The Bridge to Terabithia, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Anne of Green Gables, and Hop On Pop from the Ironton County Mobile Library on Wheels. If Kyra can do it, then I think YA readers and writers should be more accustomed to this being a possibility for the protagonists they love to read about or create. While it might not to reasonable for all main characters to be big readers, it shouldn’t be out of the question either.
Overall, Williams’ The Chosen One is a powerful story that will have you under its spell from the moment you open it to the first page right until the closing line. In fact, despite my own plan to read only a few more pages, I found myself unable to put it down and walk away without knowing where the story will leave Kyra and am quite certain that you will, too. Don’t let it’s addictive quality stop you from picking up this novel, or you’ll kick yourself in the pants when you see what you missed out on later.
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