Review: The Chosen

The Chosen by J.R. Ward
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Gah, I don't know what to say about this book. As usual, there are a few ongoing storylines that dominate this book. The main story, however, is between Xcor and Layla. This was been building for a while, so it's not too much of a surprise. That being said, this was not... what I was expecting.

When we last saw Xcor, he was in the custody of the BDB, essentially waiting for him to wake up and get interrogated. It's assumed that they'll kill him afterwards, but there's a bit of a line for that honor. Layla gave birth to her twins and is, of course, a very doting mom. When the book starts, and Qhuinn is determined to get to the bottom of Layla's depression I thought he had finally become the honorable man we all thought was hiding inside his rough exterior. I was wrong. So very wrong. When Layla inadvertently reveals all her secrets to him, he goes insane. There's no other way to explain his actions that follow. His actions set off a series of horrible and torturous scenes. It was pretty hard to get through - depressing and gritty.

Since I found the central story so hard to get through, I ended up focusing on the side stories that consisted of revisiting the super depressing Trez situation, handle the missing virgin scribe issue (probably the best part of the book), V being the worst ever, and get little glimpses of some other loose ends. All in all, though, this was a book I could have done without. Sure, it pushed things along and we knew Layla and Xcor had to end up together, but certain aspects just seemed to be there to... undo things that happened earlier. After finally accepting Trez losing his mate now we're going to reopen that wound? After we get a HEA for V, we get some rushed side story about that not being true? I can't even get into how much I hate what Qhuinn did to his own relationship. Oh, but don't worry, somehow everyone is happy at the end? Bah. This book left me wishing for more of the spinoff series and less of the brothers.

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