Prodigy by Marie Lu [Review]

Prodigy (Legend #2) by Marie Lu
Format: hardcover
Source: purchased
Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
Date read: July 16, 2013

Legend
0.5. Life Before Legend
1. Legend
2. Prodigy - Hardcover | Kindle
3. Champion

Marie Lu
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Synopsis (Goodreads):

June and Day arrive in Vegas just as the unthinkable happens: the Elector Primo dies, and his son Anden takes his place. With the Republic edging closer to chaos, the two join a group of Patriot rebels eager to help Day rescue his brother and offer passage to the Colonies. They have only one request—June and Day must assassinate the new Elector.

It’s their chance to change the nation, to give voice to a people silenced for too long.

But as June realizes this Elector is nothing like his father, she’s haunted by the choice ahead. What if Anden is a new beginning? What if revolution must be more than loss and vengeance, anger and blood—what if the Patriots are wrong?

My Thoughts: This was a tough book to sit down and immerse myself in. Not in terms of readability because I zipped through it pretty quickly once I started. The toughness came because June and Day were being asked to do something horrific (assassinate a man in cold blood) to gain the support of the Patriots. Yeah, there were a few alarms blaring in my head when I read that. The plan, the conditions of help, EVERYTHING had me in a tizzy.

June fascinates me. She's brilliant and analytical (her instinctive visual and mental break down of everything she comes into contact with shows us this very effectively) and because of this she comes across as cold and unfeeling at times. She knows she's saying things that are being misconstrued, too, yet she can't quite make her smarts and her social side work together.

And then there's Day. He's quick and smart but he never had the benefit of the training that June had. He's the face of the revolution and this new set of circumstances is testing him. Old friends are pulling him in one direction, his grief for his family is pulling him in another -- actually, his grief over what the previous Elector did to his family is what's driving him. He's a ragged mess and being separated from June, not able to talk through her reasoning behind her actions, isn't helping matters.

I'm going to pause here and say that June and Day are both 15. FIFTEEN. They're both brilliant and the two of them together don't give me heebies. Sure, Day is frighteningly smooth when he pours on the charm but he's had to live by his wits on the street and that side of him works. What skeeves me out is that the new Elector is 20 and he's had his eye on June since she was 12. *insert horrified eyes here* That's yucky. While it works for the story, the idea makes me cringe.

So... big things happen. BIG THINGS. And the future is both bright and bleak in turn for the Legend and the Prodigy. Book 3 is going to kill me, isn't it?