Review: The Young Elites by Marie Lu

Title: The Young Elites
Release Date: October 7th, 2014
Genre: romance, young adult, fantasy
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I am tired of being used, hurt, and cast aside.

Adelina Amouteru is a survivor of the blood fever. A decade ago, the deadly illness swept through her nation. Most of the infected perished, while many of the children who survived were left with strange markings. Adelina’s black hair turned silver, her lashes went pale, and now she has only a jagged scar where her left eye once was. Her cruel father believes she is a malfetto, an abomination, ruining their family’s good name and standing in the way of their fortune. But some of the fever’s survivors are rumored to possess more than just scars—they are believed to have mysterious and powerful gifts, and though their identities remain secret, they have come to be called the Young Elites.

Teren Santoro works for the king. As Leader of the Inquisition Axis, it is his job to seek out the Young Elites, to destroy them before they destroy the nation. He believes the Young Elites to be dangerous and vengeful, but it’s Teren who may possess the darkest secret of all. 

Enzo Valenciano is a member of the Dagger Society. This secret sect of Young Elites seeks out others like them before the Inquisition Axis can. But when the Daggers find Adelina, they discover someone with powers like they’ve never seen. 

Adelina wants to believe Enzo is on her side, and that Teren is the true enemy. But the lives of these three will collide in unexpected ways, as each fights a very different and personal battle. But of one thing they are all certain: Adelina has abilities that shouldn’t belong in this world. A vengeful blackness in her heart. And a desire to destroy all who dare to cross her.

It is my turn to use. My turn to hurt.

“Be true to yourself. But that’s something everyone says and no one means. No one wants you to be yourself. They want you to be the version of yourself that they like.”

This book. 

Okay.

This book.

To be honest, I had some high expectation from this book because you know it’s Marie Lu and judging from all the people who really love the the Legend series, I expected this book to be incredible!

Yet sadly I was disappointed.

Yet at the same time amused.

The one thing that bugged me the most about this book was the characters. Adelina has a lot of face time in this but I really want to know about the other characters more like more communication between them and Adelina instead of how much we have. I like Enzo but I wasn’t swooned. I wasn’t really that convinced that there was actual chemistry between them because they lacked communication! Like the scenes they have together, most of it were more action then words. I wanted more personality from Enzo instead of this deadly exiled prince vibe from him.

I wanted so much more from these characters and more interaction than what Lu gives us and it’s frustrating because Adelina is having all these feelings when there’s BARELY any show of the other characters and when they do show them they’re all static and I hope the next book we get more of them because they aren’t that memorable.

Can we also take the time that Miss.Lu has wrote a legit awesome antagonist?

Like every time Teren comes around he’s so creepy and evil

Teren’s one of the most evil villains I ever read. I first thought he was going to be love interest #2 but dude seeing how evil and wicked he is, I hope Adelina won’t switch over to him because he’s just awful. I actually hate him and I enjoy hating him.

Let’s also talk about Adelina again. I watched this review on The Young Elites on youtube and I forgot her name but she said usually every bad ass main character gets angry or when shit starts going down, they lose all their humanity and it’s true. Just think about the books with the bad ass main characters like Celaena from the Throne of Glass series. I think this is something that authors should all work on.

Badassery does not mean the losing their humanity.

And Adelina really lost all her humanity in this book because I even felt myself drowning in her shadows and darkness.

Overall this book had potential but did not meet the expectations I hoped for but yet it was an amusing and entertaining read and I will be continuing on to the second book.