The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams, Book Giveway

This novel will grab you. It sounds too much like some recent court cases about polygamy and prophets and compounds...

Krya is 13, and living in a compound where her father has three wives and she has multiple brothers and sisters. They live in a poorer section of the compound because father hasn't been chosen to be an apostle yet. The apostles and the prophet live in the beautiful houses with lots of amenities the other members of the community will never see.

But Krya is happy. She loves her family, enjoys her father when he spends his week with her mother and their family. But she's also found a young man that attracts her. She's always done a lot of walking, mostly to have some alone time.

Now she's found out there's a bookmobile out where she walks - and she brings books home and hides them in her secret tree so she can read. The prophet had them burn all their books - only the bible is allowed reading material now. But the books open her eyes to how things can be in other parts of the world...

Then she finds that she almost might be in love with Joshua and he wants her for his chosen one.

Unfortunately, the prophet has a vision and sees her chosen partner to be her father's older brother - her uncle! He's old, he's not kind, and she shudders to think of him as her husband.

Anyone who doesn't follow the rules is beaten into acceptance. The children who are "faulty" or unacceptable in some other manner are killed. The young men are run off.

If she doesn't agree to marry her uncle, her father will be driven from the compound and his families will all be "awarded" to another man.

But when the bookmobile driver dies trying to save her, and her boyfriend is run out of the compound, Kyra just knows she can't give up and marry her uncle...

I can honestly say I'd probably have died in that situation - the punishments and brain washing would just not work with me. I'd have said how I felt about it - and they would have taken care of me. Like they did others in the compound.

However, Kyra did manage to make her situation better. If you'd like to find out how, I'm giving away my ARC.

Post a comment here on my blog and email me at info@bookfaerie.com with your name and address and why you'd like to read it. I'll pick someone in about a week.