The Young Elites

I didn't know much going into this book. All I knew that it was somewhat fantasy, the main girl was missing an eye, and that Marie Lu wrote it. That is all I really needed to know but the entire idea behind this book is better reason to pick it up.

The Young Elites is about this sickness that hit the world and caused the adults that got it to die and the children have been marked where some even grew to have certain “powers”. The main girl is named Adelina Amouteru and damn is she not the most broken main protagonist I have read in a while. She has this dark twisted background that a lot of characters do not have without being the villain in the story. She has so many problems and they all have to do with her father. He grew a type of anger toward her after she grew sick and lost her appeal. She never felt loved by her father but her little sister got all of the attention because she was still pretty and he could get some money off her by giving her away.

Adelina got sick during this time and it caused her to lose one of her eyes, gained marks on her face, and was marked as a malfetto. These are the people that have been marked from the sickness and are frown upon by the other people around the world. I mean what the fuck is that about though? Like I am sooooo sorry I got sick as a kid, lived through it, and now I have these marks. My bad. It was obviously my entire fault and you should hate me. Anyway.. some of the kids that lived through this fever have gotten certain powers and are known as the Elites.

Learning about the background of the fever and the Elites bothered me a bit. It didn't add up that much in my mind and I needed more information. I'm sure Marie Lu will go more into it in the second book and the first book was just there for the structure of the actual problem. There wasn't much information about where this part of the world actually was and it was hard for me to picture it all happening except in a generic area.

For the young elites, they all seemed weird and I had a hard time picturing what they looked like and ended up matching their faces up with their personalities. All of the Elites have this broken background (except Gemma) because they were all shunned or left alone. The Reaper, or Prince Enzo, was a different character to get to know. He just takes care of all these people and trains them for what is to come. The problem is that they are fighting fire with fire because The Elites are pretty much a terrorist group, killing people around them to get back at the kingdom and even their own people/malfettos.

I did like the Prince though because he seemed like one of those main characters that actually had their shit together. (Even though he was broken as well) He took care of everyone around him and made sure that they did their best but he wasn't afraid to kill them if they got out of hand or would be a problem for the others.

One of the characters I liked the most was Raffaele because he was very protective of the Prince but he also wanted to see the best in Adelina... even though we know that he was also scared of her. He and Enzo pretty much ran the Elites. Raffaele would find the others like them and Enzo would help train them. He was just an interesting character to read about.

Even though Adelina was pretty weird and dark, she was an interesting character to read about and narrate. I enjoyed that twisted side that she had and the little thoughts in her head being the angel/devil. It was something new for Marie Lu to mess with and I think she did a decent job on creating the correct atmosphere for the characters.

I cannot wait for the next book to come out because that ending made me so mad and I needed to find out what will happen next! The epilogue kept me interested in wanting to read the next book and even introduced a new character that seemed pretty kickass.

I would recommend picking up this book if you like fantasy (not high fantasy) and need a bit of a change in protagonists. There are no heroes in this book. They all have problems and they all seem to be on the bad side of things but it is interesting to view it as such. Also, Marie Lu writes her characters well and there are so many different ones in this book.