eBook purchased by me.
Summary:
Once a century, one person is chosen for greatness.
Elisa is the chosen one.But she is also the younger of two princesses, the one who has never done anything remarkable. She can’t see how she ever will.
Now, on her sixteenth birthday, she has become the secret wife of a handsome and worldly king—a king whose country is in turmoil. A king who needs the chosen one, not a failure of a princess.
And he’s not the only one who seeks her. Savage enemies seething with dark magic are hunting her. A daring, determined revolutionary thinks she could be his people’s savior. And he looks at her in a way that no man has ever looked at her before. Soon it is not just her life, but her very heart that is at stake.
Elisa could be everything to those who need her most. If the prophecy is fulfilled. If she finds the power deep within herself. If she doesn’t die young.
Most of the chosen do.
Review:
I suppose the easiest way to start this review is to look at one of this books most divisive elements: her weight and her weight loss.
On the one hand, it’s nice to see plus-sized protagonists. They just don’t happen in YA. It’s also nice to see what she does lose weight, it’s because she marched three weeks in the desert, and not due to any kind of magic – paranormal romance is particularly guilty of weight-loss via wishes/deals with devils.
On the other hand, while she’s heavy, she’s painted as an unhappy girl with an emotional eating problem. But when she loses the weight all those problems (and her emotional eating) just poof…disappear. Like, Carson goes out of her way to point out she’s not eating past the point when she’s full now. I’m sorry, but that’s not how it works. Increased confidence is fine, but struggles with emotional eating tend to STAY struggles. They really don’t disappear like that and it ultimately makes the book feel like it has a bit of a “just lose weight and all your problems go away” message that not only isn’t true, but also be hurtful to teen girls who are struggling with weight issues. I haven’t even mentioned how in her post-weight-loss state she’s also suddenly completely pro-exercise, at one point jogging outside her carriage and wondering how she ever preferred a carriage to just walking/jogging which is also kind of eye-roll inducing.
Finally, my biggest problem is: why does she bother in the first place? After she loses the weight, almost all of these issues are dropped, leaving it as a kind of Princess Diaries-esque transformation and begins her transition to a fairly typical and trope-y YA fantasy heroine. I don’t feel this was handled well enough to have been included, and would have rather seen it left out.
So yeah. Props for not making her super skinny, but no one should be holding up this book as an example of a pro-size-acceptance book either.
Even outside of that – and I will say that I didn’t find it a book breaker as just something generally problematic – there are other issues with the character. Elisa is another YA heroine in the long line of girls who are completely unprepared to step up and take control do so in ways that are hard to buy into. She’s had no military training outside of a single book (think of the Art of War) she is thinking of all these ways to lead an insurgency. At the beginning of the book she’s sickened by the thought of killing a man, and by the end of the book she’s literally can’t wait to do so. It’s the usual questionably believable stuff.
From a world-building perspective, I like that this is a Spanish-influenced secondary world because it’s not something seen that often in fantasy. On the flip side, the religion is VERY vague, and if she didn’t lean enough of Catholic influences we probably wouldn’t know much of anything. Like, why does this God choose a bearer and why exactly do they have such direct links to their God – the Godstone seems to react to every prayer of hers. Why can the enemy do magic with these stones and no one else can. Is everyone else so God-fearing that they never even tried? These questions make the ending pretty ludicrous, with her literally praying to save the day. I admit it, the actions leading up to that prayer actually made me laugh out loud (seriously visualize it and it tell me you took it seriously) and the amount of power she was able to produce made me wonder if she’s mean to be this God reborn.
Let’s be clear, it’s still a quick and easy read and is hardly the worst YA fantasy I’ve ever read. That said, the underdevelopment of the religious aspects are a detriment to this book and if someone is going to read a more generic YA title, I’d rather read one where things like weight issues are handled with more delicacy and not just a stopover on the way to the Pretty YA Heroine station.
Verdict: Skip It
Fantasy Findings 