House of Night, Chosen: Chapter 16

This chapter marks the return of beloved fan-favourite Heath! Jokes aside, I’m sure there was at least one House of Night fan that was starting to get antsy about when Heath would pop up in this book. Would he be away at a football-Shakespeare tournament? Or would he show up to throw another wrench into Zoey’s increasingly complicated and inappropriate love life?

I knew the second Heath got back in town because he interrupted my dream. I had been lying out in
the sun (see, clearly a dream) on a big, heart-shaped floatie in the middle of a lake made of Sprite (who knows?), when all of a sudden everything disappeared and Heath’s familiar voice burst into my skull.

What a delightfully quirky dream Zoey’s having, before Heath’s voice booms down on her like God himself is speaking! The little details like a lake made of Sprite of all the wacky things really makes her feel like such a relatable heroine.

Zoey opens her eyes, but only her asshole cat is there. I am so tired of having to read about this fucker “mee-uf-owing.” WE KNOW HOW CATS SOUND, OKAY? I don’t care if you think this cat has a slightly different way of meowing – it adds nothing, nothing, do you hear me? God.

Quickly forgetting about Heath and upsetting the one person who gave a fuck that he was back in the story, Zoey returns to fretting about her step-father’s possible involvement in the murder of Professor Nola, who you definitely hadn’t already forgotten was a character that apparently existed in this series.

Even though Zoey doesn’t care about her step-father, she doesn’t want her mother implicated if he was involved. Even if you are 100% invested in this story because you suffered a head injury or are going through a difficult time in your personal life, I would think Zoey and the Casts have made the mother so unsympathetic that this inner-conflict is super uninteresting even though it makes sense that Zoey would still be sad if something bad happened to her mother. This lady is hella icky!

Today I was just stressed. On top ofeverything else, having Aphrodite join our circle wasn’t going to be a popular move. Whatever. My friends were just going to have to deal with it. I sighed. My life seriously sucked. Plus, I was probably depressed. Didn’t depressed people sleep for, like, ever? I closed my bristly eyes, giving in to my self-diagnosis and was almost asleep when “Zoey baby!” screamed through my mind just as my alarm started bleating.

Is Heath mentally screaming, “ZOEY BABY”? That’s fantastic! It just gets stranger the more you think about it. It’s written like there’s no natural pause in there like, “Zoey, baby, wake up.” Nope. Just straight-up ZOEY BABY HURRY DOWN THE CHIMNEY TONIGHT is definitely how it is supposed to be read.

In case ZOEY BABY wasn’t enough of a gift from the Casts, it’s time for more texts from Heath. Did you miss Heath’s text messages? I sure did. They are perfectly crafted works of art:

Zo! Im bak!

Zoey I have to see u

Still luv you Zo

Zo? Call me.

ZO BABY CALL ME GURL I LUV U I HOPE U LUV ME 2!!!!111!!

I don’t think you understand. If the Casts offered a Teens Texting 101 class, I would take it in a heartbeat. Teach me your ways!

Zoey recaps her relationship with Heath for the audience, and it’s amazing:

He and I had Imprinted more than a month ago. He’d also been snatched by Stevie Rae’s gross undead-dead kids’ gang and almost killed. I’d played like I was the cavalry (or at the very least Storm from X-Men) and rescued him, but before we could get totally away Neferet had showed up and zapped our memories. Because of my gifts from Nyx, I’d regained my memories. I didn’t have a clue if Heath remembered anything at all.

Cool, okay, so far so good. We’ll just let that weird reference to Storm awkwardly float there in the air where it belongs. As soon as Zoey starts trying to explain her past experience dating Heath is where I’m like, “Wait. No. What? Why are you saying these things?”

Okay, clearly he remembered that we Imprinted. Or that we’re still dating. Although we really weren’t. I sighed again. How did I feel about Heath? He’d been my on-again, off-again boyfriend since I was in third grade and he was a fourth-grader. Truthfully, we’d mostly been on-again until he decided to have a deep and meaningful relationship with Budweiser. I so don’t want my young lad to be a drunk, so I dumped him, even though he hadn’t really seemed to understand he’d been dumped. Not even my being Marked and moving to the House of Night had made him understand we were through.

“I so don’t want my young lad to be a drunk.”

My. Young. Lad.

Is Zoey suddenly trying to be English? Sarcastic? Genuine? A purveyor of hip teen slang? I’ve never been so intrigued by one line in this book before. WHERE DID MATERIALISE FROM?

For about the zillionth time I wished I had someone I could talk to about all of my boy issues.Actually, counting Loren I should call them my boy-man issues.

No, you absolutely should not. “young lad” and “boy-man” issues are enough to strip away your rights to ever reference males ever again.

Zoey lays out her options, and realizes that she should keep dating Erik and thus needs to break up with Heath and REALLY needs to end things with Loren even though, “He. Was. A. Man. An adult vampyre, with all the power and wealth and position that came along with it. He knew stuff that I was only beginning to guess at. He made me feel like no one had ever made me feel before; he made me feel like a real woman.” If someone has to make you feel like an adult, then you should probably not be with that person. You could argue Zoey means he makes her feel womanly/feminine, but you’d be wrong. 

Zoey texts Heath that she needs to meet up with him, and he is pumped as fuck. Momentary panic sets in when Zoey realizes she doesn’t know where to meet Heath until she remembers Starbucks is the only place she ever goes off-campus.

Then it hit me and I knew the perfect place. I smiled and texted Heath back.

Starbucks in 1 hr

Her sneer deepened. “Look, I wasn’t being nice. I just didn’t want Stevie Rae foaming at the mouth and eating my parents’ help. As Mother says, dependable illegals are really hard to find.”

Ug, we get it, Aphrodite’s parents are terrible.