The Young Elites by Marie Lu (2.5/5)

Overall, I wanted to like this book more than I did. The idea of it is cool and the plot is solid(ish), but the characters fell short for me. There were also a few things that irritated me repeatedly, mainly revolving around the main character, Adelina.

The Premise

The novel is set in a fantasy world where a sickness known as the “blood fever” swept through the population, killing the adults and marring the children. The surviving children became known as malfettos, and some of them ended up with abilities. These became the Young Elites. The kingdom that serves as our main setting has mixed attitudes toward the malfettos, but the crown’s stance is definitely “malfettos are bad.” The Dagger Society, a group of Elites led by the exiled Prince Enzo, are attempting to get rid of the current rulers so he can take his place as king.

The Characters

Adelina: I’m somewhat fascinated by the main character in this novel. She has a darkness in her—bitterness, hatred, a thirst for power—that makes her intriguing for a young adult protagonist. The problem with her character is that the author leaned into it way too much. She kept telling us about Adelina’s “alignments” and the darkness inside her, instead of letting her actions speak for themselves. This is a case of the writer wanting to make sure their readers get the point so they beat that point to death, which always irks me. Trust your readers to understand. We deserve more credit than we get sometimes.

That being said, I do still like the idea of her character. I’m hoping that the next book will be more subtle about her character flaws and showing them to us instead of stating them outright. I’m also hoping she’ll get more of a character arc. Flawed characters are great because they have so much room to grow, but Adelina never makes progress. If anything, she gets worse, which I guess is still an arc—a villain origin story. That would be a fun twist.

Enzo: I honestly didn’t care for Enzo much. The exiled crowned prince and leader of a society of Young Elites could have been a great character. I didn’t hate him, but I was indifferent enough that his death didn’t affect me much. I felt bad for the people who cared about him, and his death marked the failure of all their plans, but the loss of Enzo himself? I feel like I might have cared a lot more if I knew anything about him. We get a taste of his past and small moments of vulnerability, but he feels fairly two-dimensional to me. As far as I can tell, his only goal is to take back the throne, which isn’t enough for me to root for him. He doesn’t even seem to care about the malfettos he claims he wants to protect. He’s let them die and killed others to further his goals, which makes him seem like just another tyrant to me. I’m not broken up about his death.

Teren: Our (slightly insane?) villain, Head Inquisitor, and a traitor to his own kind. Teren is a Young Elite, like the other characters, but his goal is to kill all of them. He sees himself and the others as abominations and seeks redemption in the eyes of the gods by destroying the Elites. He has the ability to heal himself almost instantly, which makes him annoyingly hard to kill. It also turns out that Teren and Enzo were friends growing up, which holds so little relevance in the overall story that I’m not sure why it’s in there. The lack of that little tidbit wouldn’t have changed much. It could have resulted in some emotional turmoil for both Teren and Enzo, since their goal is killing each other, but it… didn’t. I am excited to see where Teren’s story goes from here. He could have a great redemption arc (I have a weakness for redemption).

Raffaele: My favorite of the secondary characters, even though we really don’t get to know that much about him either. Raffaele has this calming, kind, but also mysterious presence that makes him an intriguing character. I found I cared most about what happened to him, so when he ends up in danger I tore through the next chapters to find out what happened to him.

Violetta: Adelina’s perfect younger sister who escaped being marked by the blood fever and was doted on by their father. I won’t say much about her because we really don’t know much, aside from her being the main source of inner conflict for Adelina. She has the potential to become my favorite character, depending on how the rest of the series plays out. I like the brief insight we get into her character, which is basically the knowledge that she never seemed to help Adelina avoid their father’s abuse but protected her the only way she knew how. More on that later.

The Daggers: We don’t get to learn much about the other Daggers. They have pretty surface level personalities with some potential, but not enough of the book is focused on them to form full-fledged characters. They’re just kind of there.

The Plot

This book started a bit slow. We get an exciting beginning, learning about how Adelina ended up headed to her execution, and then her subsequent rescue. One of the first things we know about Adelina is that she killed her father in a fit of fear and rage. And she didn’t really feel bad about it.

See what I mean about letting her actions speak for themselves? That’s all it takes for us to know she has some baggage to work through.

After that, it’s a bit sluggish as we learn about Adelina’s powers and the Dagger Society and meet the rest of the characters. Raffaele starts training her to use her powers, which is interesting for a little bit but for some reason got old. I’m not sure why I didn’t enjoy learning about the magic. I think that, as with Adelina’s character, the explanation and descriptions of their powers was heavy-handed. She talks about energy and “pulling” on the threads, which is cool, but frequently references drawing power from the darkness inside her and I think it bothered me. I don’t even want to count how many times we’re told about the darkness inside her or how she drawers her power from fury and fear. We get it.

When Teren finds her and threatens her sister’s life, that’s when the plot really starts rolling. Adelina finally has her motivation. She wants to save her sister, Violetta, and even considers betraying the people she wants to consider friends. Her struggle between loyalty to the Daggers and the desire to protect her sister is what drives the rest of the book. She goes back and forth between wanting to trust them with the truth, then deciding she can’t, which honestly I agree with. I’m pretty sure if she told them, they A) wouldn’t have helped her and B) might have killed her so she couldn’t turn against them. I don’t care if Enzo had a thing for her. They would have gotten rid of her the moment she became a threat.

Adelina slowly grows stronger and eventually becomes one of the Dagger Society. All the while still trying to figure out how she can save her sister without betraying them. Then she overhears one of the Daggers telling Enzo she can’t be trusted, so she freaks out and goes to Teren… because he’s so much better. She still decides not to betray the group that took her in and instead rescues her sister on her own. Turns out Violetta is also a Young Elite who has the ability to temporarily take away other people’s powers (and used this on her sister to suppress her abilities and keep her hidden, with the intention of protecting Adelina).

As the sisters run from Teren, we learn that the king is dead (assassinated by Teren) and the Inquisitors have basically been given free rein to dispose of all the malfettos in the city. A dark day for the poor survivors of a deadly disease. We also find out that Raffaele has been taken prisoner and Teren threatens to kill him if Enzo doesn’t come forward. To save Raffaele, Enzo challenges Teren to a duel that he can’t possibly win… except with Violetta’s help, obviously.

Adelina returns to the Daggers and they figure out Violetta can help them kill Teren, so the sisters help with the final plans to overthrow the king and queen. Except during the final fight, Adelina screws up and attacks Enzo, thinking he’s Teren, which gives Teren an opening to kill the prince. I will say, I did not see that coming, but they hint at a Young Elite who can bring people back from the dead. I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen the last of him (don’t know how I feel about this). Even though it was an accident, the Daggers decide they can’t trust Adelina and kick out of the group, which of course worsens the bitterness she carries.

Oh, yeah, and through all this there’s some kind of “romance” going on between Enzo and Adelina. More like he’s attracted to her because she looks like his dead fiancé. He tells her he knows who she is and he cares about her but I’m not sure I believe him. I guess we’ll never know, unless they bring him back. After meeting Princess Maeve (who brought her brother back to life) in the epilogue, I’m fairly certain that’s where this is headed. Because nothing could possibly go wrong there. I’m still pulling for a romance between Raffaele and Enzo, because their chemistry was infinitely better than Enzo/Adelina after only one scene with the two of them alone. Plus, Raffaele confirms that he loves Enzo. Please just give me that ship!

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, I would have liked this book a lot more if the characters were more developed and the author didn’t spend so much time telling us how dark and angry and afraid Adelina is. She could have cut so many words out of the book and then used that space to actually develop the other characters.

As perpetually irritated as I was, I am going to read the second book and see where it goes. I’m intrigued by where we’ll go from here (and whether Marie Lu will learn some subtlety). There’s so much potential here if the story gives all the characters the time and attention they need.

Intertwined by Gena Showalter (1/5)

I don’t even really know where to start with unpacking this, so we’ll break it into categories. Honestly, this book bored me more than anything else, which I guess is better than making me angry in the “tempted to throw the book against the wall” sort of way.

The Premise

This is what makes me so sad. The premise is really interesting. The main character has four other people living in his head, each of them with their own special abilities. Julian can raise the dead, Eve can time travel to earlier version of Aden’s own self, Elijah can see the future, and the Caleb can possess other beings. I intentionally put Caleb last because I finished this book and spent way too long trying to remember what the hell his power was… because he used it twice. And Julian’s power was only used in the first chapter, I’m pretty sure.

Which I think is one of this book’s main shortcomings. It got so bogged down in the vampires and werewolves that it didn’t focus on the interesting part. Aden has people inside his head! With powers! So why are we so focused on his vampire girlfriend? But we’ll get to her….

The Characters

Aden Stone: I have zero feelings toward Aden whatsoever. He was labeled as a “troubled kid,” shuffled between foster homes and mental institutions because he has this habit of talking to himself. He seems like he wants to do the right thing. Mostly help free the people in his head, who have been his only friends throughout his life. But I just didn’t get much personality from him. What I did get was conflicting. The thing that stands out most in my mind is his tendency to get into fights. Most of the time, he seems like a fairly mellow (boring?) person who really just wants people to leave him alone. Someone tries to start a fight and Aden isn’t interested. But then they call him a wuss and Aden goes straight from “I don’t want to fight” to “I’m going to punch him in the face until someone stops me.”

Plus, he’s dense. There are characters who aren’t the sharpest. Some are even endearing in their stupidity. Aden drove me crazy with how long he took to come to some conclusions. The best example: Aden realizes (way too late) that he can see ghosts. I knew it from the time he first met two of them. What were the clues? Well let’s see…

1. This lady, described as having “shimmery skin,” seemed desperate to talk to him because she hadn’t been able to speak to anyone in a long time.

2. He ended up with this kid yammering at him in class. When Aden said something back, he got in trouble for talking in class, but this other shimmery skinned kid didn’t. Why??? Hell if Aden knows.

3. When he told someone else about the kid in class, she says something along the lines of “someone was messing with you. That kid died last year.”

Aden… honey… please.

Mary Ann: Aside from the four souls in Aden’s head who don’t get nearly enough screen time, Mary Ann was probably my favorite character. She could have used a lot more development and a better arc, but her character had so much potential. She’s the “ten year plan” type of girl, I think mostly because of pressure from her father, but not resentful about it. Even her dad tells her she needs to spend less time on schoolwork and more time having fun. I love seeing characters like this be pushed out of their comfort zone and fail spectacularly, but unfortunately her character doesn’t really go anywhere from there. Aside from skipping class a few times and crushing on a werewolf before she even knows anything about him or sees his human form.

Victoria: Ah… Victoria. Oh how I wished you were interesting at all. A vampire princess, the daughter of the infamous Vlad the Impaler (AKA Dracula). Aden (or Elijah, technically) saw her in visions and Aden was already half in love with her before they met. I’m okay with a fascination, excitement, and instant attachment associated with having visions of kissing someone. Sure. But their relationship never becomes real to me. I don’t have any idea what draws Victoria to Aden, and we never get much more than “damn, she’s hot” for the reasons behind his feelings. I hate insta-love with no basis in chemistry…. That was this relationship.

Riley: He easily could have been my favorite character. He’s the broody, stoic, raised to be a warrior type that I have a weakness for. If there were anything beneath that. We learn basically nothing about his past and he doesn’t show much depth beyond perhaps moments of softness toward Mary Ann. He latches onto Mary Ann in the same way that Victoria and Aden latch onto each other. There appears to be emotion behind it except perhaps physical attraction. He walks her to and from school in his wolf form for no apparent reason (if there was a reason, I missed it).

In summary… none of the characters had much depth in my opinion and the romance felt forced. There was very little emotion in this book and I didn’t find myself attached to any of the characters.

The Plot

The plot to this book was… okay? I guess? The basic bones of the plot are interesting. Thinking back, I couldn’t even remember what all happened that filled all 400+ pages of this book. It starts out with Aden battling zombies in a graveyard because Julian has no control over his ability to raise the dead. Cool! The corpses even have some kind of venom that Aden has to deal with. Fun fact: we never hear anything about zombies and Julian’s power again, except maybe brief references.

Basically, the main plot is they’re trying to figure out how to free the people trapped inside Aden’s head, as well as figure out why he has some weird connection with Mary Ann. She seems to mute the voices in his head (except when Riley is around which… isn’t ever really explained). Their whole deal was the other interesting thing about this book to me. But then Victoria and Riley show up and everything gets so side-tracked until we finally come back around to figuring out Aden and Mary Ann’s past and how they’re connected.

Toward the end, we finally remember that we’re supposed to be focused on Aden’s past. We learn that Mary Ann’s father was actually one of the doctors who treated Aden a long time ago, prompting Eve to travel them back in time, and eventually this leads to the revelation that Eve is Mary Ann’s mother. Which I figured out the moment they told us her mother had the same time traveling ability.

This book focused way too much on Victoria and Riley and setting up tension with her Big Bad father. It didn’t give enough time to the actual plot of the book. It felt like I kept getting a bunch of world lore thrown at me but nothing explained in depth. We get an brief mention of all these other supernatural creatures in the second half of the book. Faeries and goblins and witches want to find Aden because he’s some kind of beacon of power… and oh, right, Mary Ann’s (ex) boyfriend is part demon! I have no idea why this was even a part of this book. It felt like a little tidbit that held no importance other than maybe offering an explanation for why Tucker was such an asshole.

I just don’t understand why the author made this a book about (mostly unexplained) supernatural creatures when it should have been about Aden and the four souls’ abilities. The four of them could have been great characters if they got any attention beyond yammering in Aden’s head. All of the world-building felt so surface-level. If you wanted to write a book about vampires and werewolves… just write a book about vampires and werewolves? People love that kind of stuff. But it was not what I expected going into this, based solely on the blurb.

Overall, I was very disappointed in the execution of such an interesting premise. I considered stopping halfway through but was curious enough to see where it went that I slogged through it. And, of course, so I could bring you this in-depth review. I hope you enjoyed reading this more than I enjoyed the book.