During today’s post, I will be calling Zoey “Zorgly”. Don’t ask me why. I just need this.
House of Night, Chosen: Chapter 17
Zorgly goes downstairs to find her friends preparing to watch Spider-Man 3 later, because we I guess we can never have enough reminders that Zorgly’s friends have embarrassingly awful taste.
But lo, Zorgly will not be able to watch Spider-Man 3 with her friends, because she has to meet Heath. Of course, the pressing thing on everyone’s mind right now is that they woke up to learn that one of their teachers was gruesomely murdered in a vicious hate crime. Maybe. It’s kind of hard to tell if they give a shit.
“I can’t believe it really happened,” Erin said.
“I know. It just doesn’t seem real,” Shaunee said.
“It’s real. She’s dead,” I said solemnly.
Oh my god, I love this. The twins both say basically the same sentence (classic Cast writing!) and Zorgly has the most accidentally hilariously blunt dialogue I’ve ever read since “In. Out. In. Out.” appeared in a sex scene in Fifty Shades of Grey.
Zorggy explains that she’s going to see Heath, and the twins summarize the Heath subplot like it’s the first chapter or something.
“Heath?” Shaunee looked utterly confused.
“Her human ex-boyfriend, Twin. Remember?” Erin supplied.
“Oh yeah, the blond hottie who almost got eaten by the vamp ghosts two months ago, and then almost got killed by that nasty street-person-turned-serial-killer last month,” Shaunee said.
You know who I love to talk with about how unnatural dialogue like this sounds like? Ariel, my friend I run this blog with who I went to college with after meeting at a writing workshop where she bought me Goldfish once and is now married and lives in London and has a job that has something to do with puppies. We love to talk about how nobody talks like this.
After reminding the reader themselves who boy #1 is, they ask Zortly what to tell boy #2. And, really, what is a name if not an opportunity to remind the reader what someone’s role is in the plot?
“Boyfriend?”
“Your boyfriend, Erik I’m-So-Damn-Fiiiine Night.”
Presumably the logical next step would be for the twins to blurt out Loren Blake’s name apropos of nothing, but instead the twins try to figure out how to solve their conundrum, because Erik asked them to let him know when Zargly’s up because he’s worried about her. Behold the beautiful way they solve their own problem:
“No doubt if he doesn’t hear from you pretty soon he’ll be camped out here,” Erin said. “Ooooh, Twin! […] Do you think boyfriend will bring along the two hotties?”
Shaunee tossed back her thick dark hair. “It’s a definite possibility, Twin. T. J. and Cole are friends of his and this is a very stressful time.”
“Right you are, Twin. And we all know that during stressful times friends should stick together.”
In perfect agreement the Twins turned to me. “Go ahead and go do whatever with ex-boyfriend,” Erin said.
This seems like an insanely contrived plan to meet romantic partners, and we’ve read Beautiful “I bet you won’t sleep in the same bed as me for a month!” Disaster.
Zorply leaves and goes outside, but immediately runs into new character Darius, one of the many vampyre warriors called in to protect the school. Darius says nothing interesting. Zoarply repeatedly describes how huge and muscular he is. Before I can even make a joke about how Zorplee’s probably going to hook up with him too, Zorggly does it for me.
How was I going to sneak out of there with warrior mountains (no matter how young and cute) all over the place? Not that it mattered how young and cute he was. Like I had time for another possible boyfriend?
Zortgly thankfully resumes focus on the more pressing issue.
the soft voice was in my head, telling me to think . . . be calm . . . […]
I needed to be calm . . . be still . . . think and— And just like that it came to me. I knew what I had to do.
You know, you can just write “then I had another idea”. You don’t have to have all of your character’s thoughts occur by divine premonition.
Zargly makes herself invisible to sneak past the guards by using an “internal prayer turned spell turned magic”, which I guess was a super important distinction to make. She arrives at the tree near the wall where Aphrodite told her she tied a rope that could be used to climb back over. Zarkgly throws the rope over the wall, then… uses the power of wind to fly over the wall. What the fuck? Why bother with the rope at all then? Especially since the rope as a whole is such an obvious red flag that someone else will eventually use it to get into the school. WHY?
Zorlgly uses this as an opportunity to not be totally full of herself.
What was it Loren had said about me in the library? Something like me being a goddess among demigods. The way I looked right then made me think that he might be on to something.
This goes nowhere good fast.
Maybe Loren had been right about a lot of things— like about the two of us being star-crossed lovers.
Maybe after I told Heath I couldn’t see him again I should back away from Erik, too. […] I wasn’t heartless— I really did like him. But hadn’t Professor Nolan’s death proved that you never knew what could happen?
I want to make fun of this, but I’d honestly be so pumped to read a “I’m breaking up with you because our high school teacher died” conversation in this book.
Zorrrgg and Heath run into each other in the middle of town, and not at Starbucks. Heath explains that Zozgrgly’s ex-best friend from her pre-vampyre days is at Starbucks, because I guess even the characters who aren’t in this story only ever go to Starbucks too.
Even worse, because of the imprint, Zargles is immediately very aware of her attraction to Heath. Although the reader might remain less in tune with this.
He smelled like home – a sexy, yummy version of home
What the fuck kind of childhood did Zorglg have?
Zorgly decides they should go to the park, since that’s the next best public space she can think of to break up with Heath. But the chapter ends with Heath seducing her and Zorrrghgy about to suck his blood.
“You know if feels so damn good when you drink me, don’t you?”
Heath’s voice had gotten deep and husky, [and] I wanted to lean into him and get lost in him and sink my teeth into him and…
And the chapter ends there! Haha! Have fun reading Heath and Zoey’s breakup/makeout next week, Ariel! You know, my blogging partner that I started a blog about bad books with three years ago when we were in the UK because we both studied abroad there!