Title: Chosen Ones
Author: Veronica Roth
Pub. Date: April 7, 2020
Rating: 4

This will be a spoiler free review. Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for an honest review. I split my reading of this book between audio and an eARC.

The first novel written for an adult audience by the mega-selling author of the Divergent franchise: five twenty-something heroes famous for saving the world when they were teenagers must face even greater demons—and reconsider what it means to be a hero . . . by destiny or by choice.

This has been sitting on my NG shelf for a while now, so I opted to download the audiobook off Audible because I’ve been so damn busy.
I’d heard a lot of really good things and I’ve been a fan of everything else Veronica Roth has written. So needless to say, my hopes were a little high.

And I’ll be honest, I was a little bored at the beginning. I didn’t really like Sloane and I was really not a fan of the asshole reporter that interviews her at the beginning. I really wasn’t sure I was going to like it, but I knew it needed to give it a little more time. So, I did.

Then I understood the hype I’d seen around this book. I ended up really loving the way the story was told. I loved how the formal documents/documentation interviews of what happened were included.
For the audiobook, I especially loved that it had a full cast and the characters really came to life. With the full cast, it felt more like having a movie playing in the background as I just listened to it.

I didn’t see a bunch of the little plot twists coming, but I definitely had my suspicions about the big one. I liked that I was right and found the ending to be enjoyable, but also a little anticlimactic. The middle of this book was fantastic. The plot was engaging and fun, the character arcs and development had me caring so much and all in my feels – Sloane’s journey, phew. I loved that this was a fresh take on the whole trope of Chosen Ones and how within each of them – Sloan, Matt, Albie, Ines and Esther – we see various consequences and coping mechanisms for dealing with everything they had to go through.

I loved the background information we got in the form of the formal documents/documentation interviews. I thought that it added a nice touch, and was an interesting and unique way of giving the necessary information.
Overall, this book is great. I really enjoyed it and I’m so glad that it lived up to the hype I’d heard about it. I’m really interested in seeing what Veronica Roth does with book 2 of this series. Chosen Ones definitely reads as a standalone, but I enjoyed it enough that revisiting this world (assuming we are back with Sloane and Co.). If you’re looking for something fun and new to read, then I’d definitely check this out!

If you have done something extraordinary in your life, that classifies you as a hero, what’s next, where can you go from there? Can you go ahead as an ordinary person? How will you find something to look forward to? Some can do it, some will be stuck in the moment. For some this moment might not be the moment of life or death, it can just be a moment when something that they waited a long time has finally happened.

Chosen Ones is about young people who have saved the world from unknown evil, and now they are heroes, but they do not want to be heroes, they want to be just ordinary young people. And then they are pulled out of their own world and into a parallel world which has magic and paranormal creatures. And once again, they have to save the world or ...
The best way to summon this book is - take Sylvain Neuvel’s Themis file series, Harry Potter series, Carnival Row AND Divergent and you have this book.

Good read, but not the adult fantasy book, that was promised.

What another great book from Veronica Roth! I’ve read previous books from this author and really enjoyed them. I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was just as good as those. I enjoyed the story and the characters were very well written.

I really enjoyed the gritty look at what it means to be THAT famous, a true Chosen One, who had changed the world. How it changes a person to be so well known. How once you stop trying desperately to save the world, what are you left with, what do you desire? It did feel like I kept waiting for something to happen, to understand the next piece of what was going to happen. I was given an advanced reader's copy via NetGalley, thank you to them. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book challenged me so much, in the best way possible. I’m so grateful to have had a chance to read an advanced copy.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thank you for a copy of this, unfortunately, the font was not good and I could not read this so I will not be reviewing.

Chosen ones!

What can I say, I just love everything that Veronica Roth writes and this book is no exception. I had it preordered before I even knew what it was about!

This is a must have like all the Veronica Roth books before it. It has amazing characters, great world building, and all the adventure I needed while I was stuck at home during quarantine.

Must read!

I received a complimentary copy of Chosen Ones through NetGalley so I could share my review with you!

Ten years ago, five teens were selected by a shadowy government agency to stop a great evil from overtaking the world. Fortunately for humanity, they succeeded. Unfortunately for the teens, they now have to deal with adult life along with their past traumas. Sloane, Ines, Matt, Esther, and Albie once banded together to stop the Dark One, but now they have moved on to fairly normal lives as semi-celebrities. All of them, that is, except for Sloane, who could never quite escape her haunting fears. When tragedy strikes on the tenth anniversary of their victory over the Dark One, the chosen ones are forced to confront the reality that the world isn’t as “saved” as they might’ve liked to have believed.

You can get your copy of Chosen Ones now!

When I heard that Veronica Roth was writing a story about the lives that heroes leave after saving the world, I knew that I needed to read it! I can’t help but fall in love with superhero stories, but Chosen Ones brought a depth and complexity that I wasn’t expecting at first glance. Sloane deals with the sort of intense trauma that would realistically follow a teenager after saving the world, creating a more realistic narrative about what being a hero means in the long run.

My Recommendations-
If you love superheroes but prefer stories with a more mature tone, you won’t want to miss out on Chosen Ones! As someone who just finished rewatching the Umbrella Academy (again), I thought this was the ideal read! It had elements of a superhero story with the grit of real humanity interwoven into every page.

Great blend of sci-fi and fantasy elements. It was action packed and a lot of fun. Bring on book two!

I LOVED The divergent Series, and was super excited to read The Chosen Ones, Roth's first adult novel. I was not disappointed. This book captivated me from page one, the way you get inside of the heads of each of the Chosen ones enticed me to the end. The intensity of the experience these people have been through can really take your breath away when you, as the reader, tries to fathom how these characters made it where they are. A lovely thriller!!

It's not you Roth, it's me.

I didn't really like Divergent, but whatever, a new series is a new chance for a first impression. But I'm left thinking this book is for someone else.

Ideas feel thrown at me... "Here, a thing happened, now feel THIS way about it!"

If you like that style of writing, you'll like this. Nothing stands out as really bad, just not for me.

**I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Veronica Roth definitely has a style. So if you liked any of her other books, you will enjoy this one too. This fun read has three parts to it. Part One is mostly background, character establishment and some good world-building. The bad guy is called The Dark One and the heroes have magic. In Part Two, the heroes travel to another dimension that has their own Dark One. In Part Three, the heroes have to decide how to save all the worlds.

Chosen Ones follows a group of young teens as they recount their experience defeating a being who was terrorizing the country. Would highly recommend this book!

Most of the time, I have to say, this book is very slow. There are fantastic action scenes, but they are few and far between. However, the building of the world is amazing, especially in Part 2 of the novel. My one small problem, I suppose, is that it almost reads like two different books in one because the second part really came out of nowhere. It was a great read overall, though, and I loved the main character who really made the book for me.

I was a little iffy because I hated the was Divergent ended and of course, I'm going to think of that series when I Veronica Roth, but I really enjoyed it!!

I was really excited about this book but I found that I could not really get into it. It has a great premise but I found the pacing to be a bit too slow for me. Other readers will enjoy it for sure though.

I wanted to LOVE this one.
As a huge fan of the Divergent series, both my teen and I were so thrilled when I was approved for this title, but it just didn’t work for either of us. I thought it was just the wrong timing for me or something, so I let him read it as well, and he felt much the same as I did.

It was slow to get there, and as a little bit longer of a title, and knowing it was written to be a series I just didn’t see what was taking so long to get there. I probably would have given up on it, if I didn’t so badly want to enjoy it. I’m sure we will read book two, to see if it gets any better, but we were both just left wanting something MORE.

This had such a slow start for me, and I just could not connect with any of the characters. The premise sounded interesting, but it ended up being very slow.

I really admire Veronica Roth and have enjoyed some of her books and really liked interviews with her. I want to support her, but this book just wouldn't stick. I have tried to read it off and on for months. The use of news articles to provide outside points of view and jumping around could be useful for a more complete story, but in this case I just didn't feel like it worked. I felt no connection to the characters and couldn't even piece together very much of a story.
I won't be reviewing this in other places because I don't like to give bad reviews that would discourage others from reading this and judging it for themselves. I really appreciate the opportunity to read this but I wouldn't recommend it. I would be open to reading another Roth book in the future as I feel like she is still a good writer.