I grabbed a copy of Denise Grover Swank‘s Chosen (The Chosen, #1) from the KDP free list.
Description From Goodreads:
Everything Emma Thompson owns fits in a suitcase she moves from one roach infested motel to another. She and Jake, her five year old son who can see the future, are running from the men intent on taking him. Emma will do anything to protect him even when it means accepting the help of a stranger named Will. Jake insists she needs Will, but Emma’s never needed help before. And even though she’s learned to trust her son, it doesn’t mean she trusts Will.
Mercenary Will Davenport lives in the moment. Hauling Emma to South Dakota should have been an easy job, but his employer neglected to tell him about Emma’s freaky son and the gunmen hot on her trail. Instinct tells him this job is trouble, but nothing can prepare him for Jake’s proclamation that Will is The Chosen One. Who must protect Emma from the men hunting her power. A power she doesn’t know she has.
Will protects Emma and Jake on a cross-country chase from the men pursuing them, while struggling with memories from his past, his apprehension of Jake, and his growing attraction to Emma. Will’s overwhelming urge to protect Emma surprises him, especially since it has nothing to do with his paycheck and possibly everything to do with the tattoo Jake branded on his arm. Rich and powerful men are desperate to capture Emma, and Will must discover why before it’s too late.
Review:
Entertaining enough while it lasted. I liked the premise of the book, and Jake, Emma, and Will are all interesting characters. I think I could have really, really liked it if it hadn’t compromised itself in so many ways. These may be personal likes and dislikes, but hey it’s my review. Others may not be as bothered by some of this.
I liked that Emma was a strong female character. Unfortunately, she spends about half the book injured in some fashion. And when injured she seemed to become completely disabled, which kind of negates all that awesome self-sufficient badassery. I liked that she was so protective of her son, Jake. Unfortunately, Jake was practically a cardboard cutout for much of the book. He was the prop that gave her a reason to be hunted. He’s important to the story. I would have liked it if he did more than sleep in the back seat for most of the book. I did really like Will. He seemed to accept all the supernatural mumbo-jumbo with amazing ease, which didn’t seem very realistic. But I enjoyed his slow acceptance of his feelings and all of his self-recriminations. Definitely an interesting addition, the question of ‘Do past bad deeds make you a present bad person?’
For much of the book, the writing and dialogue are pretty good, but then, at other times, it gets really choppy. Mostly due to the overuse of names. How often do you really say someone’s name when speaking to them? It begins to feel unnatural after a while.
The First half of the book is almost nothing but car chases and gun fights. I wouldn’t have had a problem with that if the second half of the book had made up for it, but it didn’t. The problem is that the romance just comes to fruition, you just figure out the prophecy, just figure out who is chasing them, just get started at just about everything and then the book just ends. Major, big-time pet peeve right there. I can’t even call this a cliffhanger since nothing really wraps up before the book ends. Of course, I knew going in this wasn’t a stand-alone book. I can see the ‘The Chosen, #1’ right there in the title. But that doesn’t mean it has to be without ending. The plot over the whole series looks like it could be an interesting one, but when considering just this one book on its own, it feels a bit unfinished.