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50 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Horribly Written with Terrible Messages, August 24, 2008
Okay I tried to like this book. I'm young at heart and enjoy a good high school story, but this one has a some glaring problems that I could not get past. 1. There are more run-on sentences and typos in this book than I have ever seen in a professionally published novel. Two sentences cannot be hooked together with just a conjunction. The comma is not optional. This mistake is nearly on every page of the book, at least every other page. 2. It is never okay to portray a student having sex with a teacher as a good, exciting thing. This book is listed as a teen novel. What worse message can you send than it's exciting and wonderful to get physically involved with the teacher? I'm no prude, but it's not cool for a young high school girl to make out with an adult male teacher. It's not even legal. 3. Zoey is a spoiled and unlikeable character. She'll make out with anyone with lips, and we're supposed to think it's okay bc she has a fleeting moment of guilt? Wrong. She's spoiled and cruel. If a guy were physically involved with 3 or more women at the same time he'd be portrayed as a player and a jerk, not a hero. It's not okay to toy with people's emotions in a relationship by cheating on them, and it's not okay to describe it as a fun thing. If it happened in the book with the attitude that it was a bad thing, then it would be different. Honestly if a guy were playing Zoey like she is playing them, wouldn't we hate the guy? Then how can we like Zoey without having a sexist double standard? In fact the only redeemable trait I can find for Zoey is that she wants to help Stevie Rae. That's just not enough for me. Who wouldn't want to help a friend in an extreme circumstance? 4. Zoey's grandmother was the most likable person in the book for me up until when she became a hypocrite. She seems to be an open-minded accepting person bc she is kind to Zoey when her mother is not. However she is angry with Zoey's mother and step-father bc they won't accept Zoey's religion, but then she makes a blanket comment about Christianity's main tenant being that things that are different are evil. I don't doubt that many people claiming to be Christians behave this way, but there are idiots in every religion. The main tenant of Christianity is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Love your neighbor as yourself.) That seems pretty tolerant of everyone to me. I KNOW many people don't follow this, but if they don't they're not really a Christian at all. You can't criticize someone for being intolerant of your religion while making a snarky, incorrect, generalization about another. It is hypocrisy, and characters that we are supposed to love should not be hypocrites. I'm all about tolerance, but it needs to be tolerance for all, not just those that you personally like. 5. The twins behaving like they're in a Doublemint gum commercial for the entire story also drove me crazy. 6. Every guy is described in the same way. They're all tall and drop-dead gorgeous. It's like they're all mannequins from the same department store, except for the one Christian male in the story. Characters need to be diverse, and love has to be based on more than being gorgeous. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with beautiful characters, but they can't be cardboard cutouts. Each needs to be unique, and if they're a romantic lead they need to have other admirable traits besides being Zoey's lapdogs (or how's about a personality?). In this book it's one cardboard cutout that's been xeroxed a few times. I can enjoy a great dark story provided that it's well-written, with likable characters, and a good message. Even the most brutal tragedy can have a good overall message. Chosen, however, had none of these details for me. I'm sorry to leave a book a one star review, but I can't bring myself to rate it any higher.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Bad characterisation and stagnant plot progression ruins an interesting concept, March 29, 2011
The premise of the series is quite interesting though Zoey is probably one of the biggest and most annoying Mary Sue's in fiction right now. (Think Bella Swan sue but even more blatant...and yeah, I didn't think that was possible either.) From the moment Zoey has a dream in which a *goddess* basically tells her how awesome and unique she is, I knew it was going to be one of those books (Read: published fanfic) And my god do these ladies try to make sure that we know how special Zoey is. As if the super pretty, super sparkly facial tattoos weren't enough...almost everybody she meets tells her how awesome, powerful and pretty she is (including the ever original Hottest Guy At School) and she manages to dethrone the one person who doesn't fall simpering at her feet the moment she walks through the door. But it's this book when everything starts to really fall apart. Let's imagine that this book was written from a male perspective and it was I dunno, all about Joey. Joey hanging with his friends. Joey stringing along his high school girlfriend. Joey making out with his other girlfriend. 16/17 yr old Joey sleeping with his teacher after sneaking around behind his other two girlfriends backs with her.... Uh hello five star reviews....where did you all go? It would be pretty hard to care about a cheating player like Joey, wouldn't it? Overall, it's really hard to care about or even like a protagonist as selfish, weak willed,immature and well, dumb as Zoey (especially when we're constantly told how brilliant she is )and the lack of an actual interesting plot and weak supporting characters don't really motivate me to pick up the next book. The only characters with any real development are Stevie Rae and Aphrodite...but even they aren't enough to make up for such a terrible, unsympathetic lead as Zoey Redbird.
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21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Zoey's perfect life isn't so perfect all of a sudden..., March 9, 2008
I was pretty iffy about CHOSEN. The authors have tried to throw a few curveballs Zoey's way in this book, and although I think it's long overdue I wasn't impressed. In book 2, BETRAYED, I really liked seeing Zoey grow into a role of leadership, think for herself, and show some courage. She had ideas, and she made things happen. But in CHOSEN Zoey backslides a lot - she keeps coming up with plans of action (especially where her romantic life is concerned), and then...doing the exact opposite of what she decides. She makes some progress with Stevie Rae, but loses control everywhere else. She makes some decisions that cause her friends to think twice about her. But I ended up thinking less of her friends because of these incidents. A good example comes from the very beginning of the book, in the first chapter. Zoey's birthday is Christmas Eve and she has a serious problem with "Birthmas," when Christmas and Birthday gifts are smooshed together. But all of her friends get her Christmas-themed birthday presents. This seems unlikely from people like the Twins and Damien, who are very fashion-conscious and unlikely to get excited about kitsch. Zoey isn't thrilled but she thanks them all as enthusiastically as she can. Then her friends spy on a birthday card from Zoey's old boyfriend that mentions how much she hates getting Christmassy gifts for her birthday...and they all get angry at Zoey. Because she should have told them what not to get before she knew what they were getting? Because she didn't tell them she didn't like their presents as she was opening them? Both of these things would have been pretty tacky and rude. But her friends are unanimous in their disapproval. This whole incident left me feeling pretty frustrated with her friends, who were way too quick to jump on her, and whose behavior had been a little bizarre to begin with. Later on in the book, this type of incident is repeated and I was even more shocked at how fickle her friends appear to be. If someone has your back, they shouldn't be so fast to turn against you. The end result is that even though Zoey is facing more difficult challenges than ever before, they felt manufactured and artificial to me. I'm not sure if I thought CHOSEN was better or worse than earlier books - it's still fun, self-indulgent, and kind of lightweight. I'll be reading the next one when it comes out.
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