The Chosen One

Firstly, the cover jumped out at me first. The braid was so pretty, yet haunting. In this book we follow 13 year old Kyra. Kyra is a polygamist and is isolated from the outside world. Kyra has 20 brothers and sisters and her father has three wives. In the book, these wifes are called Sister wifes. Kyra visits the Library on Wheels which is forbidden because books were banned. She secretly reads them in a tree, or in her family van. Kyra secretly visits her crush, Joshua. They both hope to choose each other instead of Kyra having a man appointed to her. However, everything changes when the prophet visits her family saying that he had a vision from god of Kyra and Hyram, her 60 year old uncle. She is to be wed to him even though he is family, 60 years old, and already has 7 sister wives. Her father tries to talk the prophet out of it but each attempt fails. Kyra tries to run by fails the first time with patrick, the man who drives the Books on wheels truck. She tells Patrick her story, and he offers to help her. She obliges, but the plan is foiled by the god squad. She is surprized when she is just returned to her family, because the last girl who tried to run was killed. She attemps again later on with a spare key in the truck that Patrick told her about. The god squad is hot on her trail, and then the phone that Patrick told her about makes a sound (Chirrup) like he told her it would. She calls the police and the god squad is arrested. Kyra is then put in a foster home. Her foster mother ran away from another colt and brought her child with her. (her child is now around Kyra’s age) She told Kyra that she missed her family too (Not her sister wives) and it was hard even with her child, so she told Kyra it might even be harder for her. Kyra misses all of her siblings, mainly Laura and her baby sister. The ending is nice. Kyra is going to someday look for Joshua (Who had to leave along with a few others) a tree is scraping across the window (I forgot the name, but its the name of the tree that Kyra reads in).
This book will make you laugh, cry, and boil inside due to pure, uncontrollable anger!( for example, how can that happen? She is just a girl!) I got yelled at for yelling in anger at 1 am by my parents .....lol....I am told I need to keep my thoughts on books to myself, however, this is an opinion that I had to share to all of you. If you haven't traffic read this yet, seriously, what the heck are you waiting for ?

Reader reviewed by trishalynn0708

What a heartbreaking, intense novel into a secret world. This book
was so intense from page one. Not one page slowed down my reading. The
story could have been longer and it still would have been just as
intense.

Reader reviewed by Jessica

THE CHOSEN ONE tells the story of thirteen year old Kyra while she lives within a polygamous group entitled The Chosen Ones. When the Prophet informs Kyra that she is destined by God's will to marry her uncle, who already has a number of wives and is considerably older than her, she suddenly begins to question the very foundation upon which she was brought up. Believing that her sins - reading books from outside the Compound, in love with a boy from their group, thoughts of escaping - have caused this to happen, Kyra find herself entangled within the thoughts of what it real and what is normal.

While she goes through her daily life, the reader can watch how she changes and begins to question the very things that had seemed normal at the beginning of the book to her. Kyra's character is developed wonderfully and the voice IS that of a scared but hopeful thirteen year old.

An amazing book which opens the eyes to the darker events in human life, THE CHOSEN ONE is a book that will keep you thinking long after you have finished reading the letters on the pages.

Reader reviewed by Erica

The Chosen One
Carol Lynch Williams
Release Date: May 12, 2009
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Pages: 224

Rating: 5 stars

Thirteen-year-old Kyra has grown up in an isolated polygamous community without questioning her fathers three wives and her twenty brothers and sisters. Or at least without questioning them muchif you dont count her secret visits to the Mobile Library on Wheels to read forbidden books, or her meetings with the boy she hopes to choose for herself instead of having a man chosen for her. But when the Prophet decrees that Kyra must marry her 60-year-old unclewho already has six wivesKyra must make a desperate choice in the face of violence and her own fears of losing her family.

This was such a compelling, powerful book of choice and rebellion. The Chosen One has such strong emotions that kept you thinking and feeling for Kyra(the main character) the entire book. With The Chosen One, there were varying shades of gray, everything wasn't just black or white. It made the book so much better.

The Chosen One was one of those books that after you read, the plot still keeps reeling in your mind. The fact that Kyra "escapes" with her books if another thing that really draws you in. The Chosen One isn't just a book, it's a story that's a long trek of emotions. It was a great read, that carries you to the end of the book, captivating you, making you read wanting more. This is a must read!

Reader reviewed by Deltay

Carol Lynch Williams' The Chosen One has been the recipient of a multitude of high praise, despite the fact that it has yet to be released. In fact, right on the cover of the ARC edition, it's referred to as "compelling", "powerful", "a masterpiece", "an important book"... With heralds like that, one begins the book with high expectations.

Despite that, The Chosen One does not disappoint. In fact, it even surpassed those high expectations, for the most part. (Just a random side observation - this is also a book written in present tense; how uncanny!) Williams has boiled down to the essence of a thirteen year old voice with the bare minimums in Kyra. The storytelling style is simultaneously captivating and credible. The flashback memories are incorporated well, the tale flows beautifully, and a sense of immediacy is created between the reader and Kyra. The one thing that irked me slightly was the random changes to poetry format. A few of them worked well, but some of the others just felt like overkill. Had the transition been a little more smooth, they might all have worked, but as it were, a few of them just felt fragmented and interrupted the otherwise amazing flow.

Kyra is characterized fantastically as a main protag. Pathos is generated masterly, and readers will be carried along on the intense ride of emotions, feeling their hearts go out to this thirteen year old girl with whom they may not have a lot in common with, but will find themselves unable to remain removed from her compelling tale. Emotions were conveyed beautifully. The supporting cast was also portrayed very well. It was easy to be swept along with the story. When Kyra was wronged by those around her, I felt angry at the perpetrators, at the Prophet, at her uncle. And such was the power of Kyra's narration - the emotions of the characters have the ability to overtake the reader before he or she is consciously aware of it.

A lot of the concepts in this novel offer insight into a world that's so close to our own, but that we don't really know a lot about. It's thought-provoking, and it'll probably draw in some controversy after its release, but especially with the amount of polygamy stories hitting the news recently, the conversations provoked will definitely be interesting.

The Mobile Library on Wheels - now that is one awesome thing. The many twists towards the end though - and this is a book which pulls you along in the story really well, without having you try to predict the answers beforehand because you're too engrossed in the present - those are very shocking and powerful. I, for one, was pretty much blown away by the progression of the climax.