Review: A Chosen Life | K.A. Parkinson (ARC)

This review contains spoilers.

“Suspicion made his mother do rash things, like pack their bags and move in the middle of the night. Tolen liked it here in this mediocre town better than anywhere else they’d lived in the last seventeen years, so he wore the stupid contact. He went to school and pretended to be like everyone else.”

Series: The Chosen Chronicles
Published: 2016, by Snowy Peaks Media.
Pages: 290
Format: eBook/ARC from Netgalley
Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult
Contains: Violence, Death, Anger.

I received a copy of this book from Snowy Peaks Media through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

‘A Chosen Life’ tells the story of Tolen Parks, a teenager who has been branded a freak by those around him and wants nothing more than to be normal. However, after a watcher appears at his home, he learns of his magical background of being known as “the Ninth Chosen” and must lead the battle between light and dark.

When reading, I swear to myself that I must always finish the book; I hate leaving one incomplete. However, with ‘A Chosen Life’ I had to make an exception. I just couldn’t bring myself to finish it.

I requested this book on Netgalley mostly because I spotted a sequel available too; my logic that if there was two available, then it must be worth it! However, I couldn’t bring myself to get past the sixth chapter in the first installment.

Although, the writing was beautiful, I love Parkinson’s way with words to make even the tiniest things sound so elegant, I found myself skim reading paragraphs rather than indulging myself in them. There was the occasional over description, mostly about things that I can’t see mattered to the plot. The concept is so large and the book so small that there was an overload of information at the beginning of the story, meaning I became overwhelmed incredibly quickly.

Personally, I didn’t like Macy’s character. I found her judgmental narrative extremely irritating to read, causing me to completely skip over her sections before returning to Tolen. Him, I did find myself routing for, yet I still couldn’t bring myself to continue reading to discover more of his character.

The concept itself sounded interesting, I’m a sucker for a “chosen one”, yet the complex names and lengthy descriptions hindered my enjoyment too much to comprehend the information I was given throughout.

Overall, I desperately wanted to complete this, and I feel incredibly unsatisfied that I couldn’t. Regardless of how interesting the protagonist seemed, the pace was simply too slow for me to enjoy.