For our third installment, Aisha Pasha ’20 returns to share a couple of books she has been reading over the past couple of weeks.
The Young Elites by Marie Lu
After writing her New York Times best-selling series, Legend, Marie Lu wrote The Young Elites, the start of a new series. This dark novel follows the rise of a villain. In Estenzia, people who survived the terrible blood fever were marred and called malfettos. Some even gained powers and were referred to as the young elites, living in cruel conditions and burned at the stake daily. A scared malfetto teen, Adelina Amouteru, lived in constant fear of her hateful father and the government so when a secret organization, the Dagger Society, offered her a place in their group, she took the chance. As she found her place with the other marred malfettos, she changed. Her strength was known to feed on the fears of others. Her friends saw the growing evil in her. The question was, was she willing to follow the good in her heart or let the evil prevail?
The characters in this novel are like nothing I have ever seen. Adelina is the exact opposite of a hero. Readers get to see into her delusions and get to know her dark heart. Enzo, the fire prince that welcomes her, was an interesting character to see grow. He went from guarded and aloof to more open. The other members of the young elites were a needed light in the darkness. They added a sense of friendship and community to the book.
What made this book so appealing to me was the fact that this book was the story of the anti-hero. Adelina’s terrible and horrifying thoughts are depicted in the story as well as everything wrong in the world she lives in, justifying her dark desires. You can see how the past of a person can shape them into the person they grow to be. Readers also see the impacts Adelina’s actions have on her newfound friends.
The descriptions of the setting, characters, and battles are amazing and vivid. The palace and villages seem to come to life. You never forget what the characters look like since it is an integral part of the story to know what deformations the blood fever left on the malefettos.
Verdict: I would recommend this story to people who enjoyed the Legend trilogy because Marie Lu’s writing has only improved. I was completely invested in this story and was devastated when it ended. The rest of the series increases in its intensity as the darkness surrounding Adelina’s heart starts to consume her. I definitely recommend checking it out.
Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone
Every Last Word is a contemporary novel about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and the effects it has on daily life. This book isn’t a normal story of high school drama. Samantha McAllister is one of the popular juniors in her class and wants to keep it that way. She strives to keep her OCD at bay and away from the prying eyes of her “friends” that she holds so dear. Any misstep will cause her catapulting out of the comfort of normalcy. When Sam meets hilarious Caroline, a girl her friends would never approve of, she cannot mention her new best friend to anyone. Caroline opens Sam up to the poetry group at her school where she actually feels like she can be herself and connect with people like her. She even gets to reconnect with an old classmate, and along the way, learns how to not let her OCD define her. But something she finds out makes her question everything she has ever known about herself.
It was so interesting to see how much OCD affected Sam’s every decision, keeping her from living the life she always imagined living. The book also portrayed OCD accurately and didn’t sugar coat any of the terrifying thoughts that come with this disorder. Sam was the typical popular girl on the outside but a mess of questions, panic attacks, and dark thoughts on the inside. It took immense self control for her for her not to question everything she did. After reading the book I was surprised at the amount of character growth that she went through in the one year when she stopped forcing herself to conform to one image. Caroline’s friendship was also something I enjoyed in the book. It added light to the story and showed that friendship can pull people out of the darkest of times and also impact a person positively and even negatively.
Verdict: If you are looking for a deep and emotional read this book is definitely for you. The writing was absolutely beautiful and descriptive and the poetry in the novel just added to the flow of events. I finished it in one day, not able to pull myself out of Sam’s world and back into my own.
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