The chosen ones by Lori Brighton.

I have known nothing but fear and death since the truth was revealed: I am a chosen one.
For centuries we have been raised as food for those who need our life’s blood in order to survive. But I’m done being a pawn in the sick and twisted lives of the beautiful blood drinkers. Determined, I will do whatever it takes to end the reign of the beautiful ones.

Fortunately, I’m not alone in this war. With the help of other escaped chosen ones, and the mysterious and stunning Thanatos, I will discover a way to destroy those who wish us harm. But first, I must give up everything that matters and do the hardest thing of all…learn to trust myself.

They took my friends, my family, and will take my life if given the chance.
I won’t let that happen.
I am a chosen one.

This was slow to start with but then after a while I just couldn't put it down.  I loved Tom and Bradshaw. My favourite part was the bunker part. Brilliant. A very enjoyable read. I love how Tom got Edward back with his bit at the end. I never did like him. 5*.

The Chosen Ones was a great novel that was very hard to put down. There was a lot of betrayal and backstabbing going on, hard to know who was a friend and who was an enemy. A lot of sad parts and some happy ones too. It had a whole new dynamic as a vampire novel. It had humans as a slave society or kept in pens, so to speak, as food. While vampires were the dominate species. Very good read!!


I received an advance reader copy in exchange for a fair review.

The description made me excited and the writing was great, but the plot fell flat for me. But I would still recommend this book. Just because it wasn't a 5 star for me, I know it is a 5 star read for someone else.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an E-ARC copy of this novel.

I will be brief on my review. I enjoyed this book, but it is not one you would take too seriously. It is a quick, fast read with quite a bit of romance for a apocalyptic background. The humans are treated like cattle and the main character, Jane, is learning that war will come. She will have to make choices that will change her future. I personally think this book is more New Adult or Adult than for teens.

This book was great. I loved the build up the characters went through when they learned their fate. When Jane has to decide to fight or wither and die that marks the turning point in the book. I enjoyed the connection that Jane had with Thane even though he wasn't supposed to be anything that she was thinking about, Who can she really trust, will it be to late? Thank you NetGalley and Lori Brighton for allowing me to read this book and write a honest review.

This is an imperfect story that the Twilight fandom will love; you just need to ignore the repetition of phrases that will come up enough that you can recite them from memory during your dreams. Is that so bad? It just reminded me of this English professor I had that would make us go through our work and highlight repetition of words on the same page and phrases within the whole paper then give us limits in order to help us build our vocabulary so we didn’t bore or irritate the reader. I really want to find that professor and ask her to proofread this author’s works because she has talent to tell a story she just needs help ironing out the nuts and bolts.

We get a quirky female character (Jane) and potential male love interests that will have you harking back to the days of Bella, Eddy and Jakey who seem to have their personalities downloaded from the brain of the actors playing them. Jane can be difficult to like as I often found her to be on the annoying side but then many people felt that same way about Kristen Stewart’s take on Bella.

Teens are obsessed with love and the paranormal which is why Twilight became such a huge phenomenon and since this series is dedicated to that age group I know this will do fine.

You should read the prequel which is crazy good and will help you go into this with better feelings. This one is just romance heavy and not in a good way, there were a few too many inconsistencies, the dreaded love triangle that has become a mainstay YA trope, and the emotional rollercoaster of you like him, you don’t gets annoying but teens in general think of that stuff as swoon worthy.

The similarities to Twilight do end and unlike that series we get more adventure, plot twists, and deception with the requisite love and friendship angles that smooth out the rough edges. If you hang in there then the ending is good enough you’ll be glad you overlooked the warts and focused on the beauty.

I have very mixed feelings about this book and until the very end I'd decided to call it quits on the next one but....
The ending changed that and despite all my reservations I'm seriously considering continuing on.

With the help of Thanatos Jane has escaped and she now knows the truth, the chosen ones are food, the beautiful ones are vampires and as we'd worked out Thane is a dhampir.

I really like Thane I thought he was an intriguing character and I'd like to discover more about him my main problem was, most of the time (especially early on) I just didn't like Jane. She was annoying, whiny and incredibly childish at times although she did improve towards the end.

I'm aware that I'm way older than the target audience but I believe that despite the target age all book should live up to a certain standard and this didn't, there's a lot of mistakes and inconsistencies.

#### SPOILERS ####

Firstly I have to say I didn't like the romance angle with Will at all.

Like I said above there's lots of inconsistencies and mistakes.
If you're going to give vampires excellent hearing it has to work across the board not just when it's convenient.
The same goes for their sense of smell, if it's so good they can smell when a human is ripe and detect someone's grandfather for example just by standing near them then surely they'd pick up when blood actually belongs to a deer and not a human.

I voluntarily read a review copy kindly provided by NetGalley and Season Publishing.