The Young Elites (The Young Elites #1)

I pre-ordered this book from Amazon to get it for my library as quickly as possible because this author\’s Legend series is hugely popular. Because I pre-ordered it, I had no reviews to read so I had no idea it would be dramatically different from the Legend series. This is a dark, dark book. It makes you feel horrid inside when you read it, and I don\’t like to feel like that, and I\’m positive no middle schoolers need to feel like that. Don\’t get me wrong, it is gripping and the writing flows, but it has no soul. I only remember 1 cuss word, and there is not a lot of sexual content, but the whole feel of the book is soul-less, violent, and darkly sensual. I can\’t think of a better word to describe it than dark – not bleak, not gloomy, not despairing, just a deep darkness. Parents – watch out for this one.

I was really excited to read this book – a dark, villainous, female protagonist?! Who isn\’t a perfect, dollfaced, wasp-waisted supermodel? Sign me up! She\’s missing an eye, for pity\’s sake! She has got to be awesome. When I finished, though, it was less \”YAY!!\” and more meh. The pacing of the whole book just felt off to me – we\’d be racing forward with the plot on one page, and the next page we\’re dragging our wagons again. The last third of the book was amazing. I felt like finally Adelina was developing some character, a little spine, and I was tired of \”listening\” to her introspective battles between dark and light. If she\’s going to be a villain, just let her be a villain already. But in all seriousness, I just felt like the author was holding back the whole time. Adelina still had to be pretty, and everyone has to think so. And she has to try to be nice and sweet and helpful. It\’s like the author was afraid if she made Adelina too dark, and not gorgeous (even with the facial scarring!) the readers wouldn\’t sympathize with her. But come on! With a backstory like hers, I would\’ve forgiven her a lot more violence than she actually committed in this book. I didn\’t get the chemistry between Adelina and the love interest, either. It just didn\’t spark for me. In fact, none of the characters really made me feel much of anything. They were just sort of there, running around on the page, and I\’m all, \”Okay, ho-hum. Can we do something else?\” I kept waiting to become involved with them, any of them, and I just couldn\’t do it. I don\’t know if it was the characterization or the plotting or what, but they just couldn\’t strike a chord with me. And did anyone else get a distinct X-Men-ish vibe about the whole thing? I loved the vignette at the end, though, with the Princess of Beldain. She seems interesting, and was characterized pretty well, considering how little of the actual book she actually appears in. I hope we get a lot of focus on her and her family in The Rose Society . Oh, come on. Even with all its problems, anyone who reads The Young Elites is going to have to go on to the next book. Like I was going to just give up? No. The premise of these books isn\’t completely unique, and the world-building left a lot to be desired, but I\’m hoping Adelina turns out to be a completely bad anti-hero who takes zero crap from anyone. We may get there. The ending of TYE was promising. TL;DR: This book was just okay, but I\’m hoping really, really hard that the next book will rock my face off. So much potential for this series.

After enjoying Marie Lu\’s Legend series, I was excited to dive into The Young Elites. The story opens with Adelina Amouteru, a survivor of the blood fever. Once considered a beautiful and desirable girl her father could marry off, Adelina was marked by the blood fever. Her dark hair turned silver and she lost her eye to the fever, only leaving a scar on her face. Her father has since never treated her as well as her sister, Violetta and constantly reminds her that she is marked, a malfetto. A series of events and a betrayal from her family leads Adelina straight to the Young Elites, a group of survivors of the blood fever with special abilities. As Adelina delves deeper into the world of the Young Elites she discovers her own powers and considers the trustworthiness of this new group. While the premise wasn\’t incredibly original to me, Adelina was the character who intrigued me. How many books have you read with a character who imagines such a bloodthirsty, violent revenge? In my case, not many. Adelina wants those who wronged her to suffer and she does not imagine any mercy. Adelina is dark, villainous and yet I rooted for her the entire book, even if it made me slightly uncomfortable to do so at times. Throughout the book it is hinted that she has a \’darkness\’ in her and that she can\’t be trusted. While we only got a glimpse of this power, it is both intriguing and powerful, and Adelina relishes the power she possess. Like I mentioned above, the idea of a world catastrophe with emerging young people with strange powers is a trope I\’ve seen before. It also happens to be one of my favorite tropes because I am a sucker for discovering all these characters with unique powers. Some can control elements like fire and wind, while some can make objects disappear and reappear in another location. While I don\’t want to go into detail for Adelina\’s power, know that it is versatile, original and probably more powerful than we realize at this point in the story so far. As far as supporting characters, there are a few important ones to note: Enzo is the leader of the Dagger Society, or the group of Young Elites that Adelina discovers. Enzo is distant, interesting and definitely has an agenda of his own. He is fascinated by Adelina\’s powers, despite repeated warnings that she could be dangerous. There is also a hint of attraction between the two, but I had a hard time trusting his motivations. Adelina\’s most important priority is herself, so I couldn\’t get too attached to other characters because I never knew when Adelina could turn on them. Teren is a character I am excited to see more of. While him and Adelina are on opposing sides of this story, I have a feeling he will be an important character in the series. He is responsible for hunting down Adelina and the other Elites, but we soon learn he is harboring a secret of his own. Violetta is Adelina\’s sister and while their relationship is contentious at times, she is arguably the only character Adelina has any feelings for at all. Unfortunately, Adelina has been hardened by the harsh treatment in her childhood and the prejudice against her for being a malfetto has hardened her heart. Violetta represents the only good part of Adelina that is left and I was pleasantly surprised with her character arc in this book. The ending fell a little flat for me in terms of action, I think I was just hoping for more. Although there were a few surprising twists and turns! I will definitely be reading the next book because I need to know what happens to Adelina. Sure, she has had a pretty terrible life so far, but she is going down a dark path and I personally can\’t wait to see where it leads. I love the idea of reading about an anti-hero! Adelina makes a lot of questionable decisions throughout the book and it seems like she is starting to succumb to the call of her dark power. Will she continue down this path? Will she get the revenge she desires? Or will Violetta continue to be the voice of her conscience? I am excited to find out!

I\’d been steered towards this book by a thread about strong female characters on Goodreads. Adelina Amouteru is Marie Lu\’s major protagonist in her book \’The Young Elites\’. In essence it\’s about a young normal girl who is changed by illness, both physically and psychologically. Her scars expose her as a survivor, but because other survivors of this disease have exhibited unusual and varied talents, some of which are quite frightening, her father tries to uncover if she has gained any with a view to exploiting her if she has. She escapes him and finds refuge among others of her kind who attempt to train her to use her \’gifts\’. So far so good. Then as is too often the case (for me at any rate) time and again her gifts fail her just when she really needs them, infuriatingly so! Additionally other characters who would have undoubtedly ended her if they had stayed true to themselves simply let her be, even help her for no explicable reason. Marie Lu describes a brutal world with a dark magic system, she hints at the power her characters hold, yet somehow they disappoint. Wouldn\’t it be more unusual and yet so refreshing if powerful characters with agendas, passions and yes evilness were written without their powers and psyche flip flopping in and out or on and off? Please just give me a constantly performing lead character, if they are evil I can live with it, if they have talents let them use them without me having to worry if they will falter for no good reason at almost every turn. I am determined to read the next in this series \’The Rose Society\’ as our anti heroine has declared she will form her own group of misfits and set things right. Or will she get tired just at the crucial moment and fumble the ball yet again?

The Young Elites by Marie Lu is a dark-ish fantasy, and the first in a trilogy. Adelina is a malfettoa survivor of a blood fever that changed her hair to silver, and left her with a scar where her left eye used to be. She lives with her sister and a cruel father who believes that she is nothing more than an abomination left to ruin the family name and fortune. One night, something dark erupts from inside Adelina causing a chain of events that lands her in the care of the Dagger Societya group of malfettos with extraordinary abilities called The Young Elites. I might just be squeamish, but I found this book to be dark. And not in the sense that theres a lot of blood and gore (although theres no lack either), but in the sense that it touches something dark inside the reader. At least it did for me. Adelina is not the typical heroine. Starting from her scarred looks, to her bad choices and complex personality, she is a unique character, that I grew to root for in many ways. The writing is on point, and I enjoyed experiencing the conflicting emotions of rooting for the villain for once. Recommended for: I dont think Ive read many stories like this before, so I cant give an If you liked that, then youll like this. But, if you enjoy imperfect characters in your fantasy stories that makes you think about the parallels to our worldthen this book might be a good match for you.

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