Book Review: ‘The Pledge’ by Kimberly Derting

By: GabrielleAdelle

I’ve lost track of how many young adult dystopian novels I have read. The recent insurgence of the dystopian worlds and romances taking over young adult literature is pretty phenomenal. Therefore, with so many on the market, there’s more pressure to create unique and entertaining story. The Pledge by Kimberly Derting manages to do that.

Before reading The Pledge, I didn’t know much about it. I was familiar with the author, Kimberly Derting, who has written The Body Finder books, which I really enjoyed. To be honest, all I remembered about The Pledge is that I thought the summary sounded interesting, yet I didn’t even remember the actual summary. Here I was ready to embark on this journey (a couple months early, thanks to Simon & Schuster) and I knew nothing about it. That’s such a rare occurrence for me, and it’s a strange feeling. It’s like going to see a movie without ever seeing the trailer. Hence, I was hesitant. But from that opening prologue, I was hooked.

The Pledge is about a girl, Charlaina “Charlie” Hart, who carries a dangerous secret. Charlie lives in a society where class is divided by the language one speaks. Each class has their own language. But in order for the society to interact with each other, there is a universal language that everyone is allowed to know and speak, called Englaise. It’s illegal to speak or understand a language outside of your class’ or Englaise. Anyone suspected of violating this law is punished by death. Charlie was born with the ability to understand any kind and form of language. This ability is a curse because she can never let on that she understands some of the conversations around her. Charlie isn’t the only one who has some magic in her. Angelina, her little sister, has something special about her as well.

At first glance, Charlie seems like a pretty simple girl. She goes to school, has two best friends, and is very close with her family. We find out that she does have a magical ability and everything that it entails. That’s when the audience becomes more attached to her; we see why she’s special. At first I was afraid, I wouldn’t like Charlie. I thought she might end up being a character without any gall. As the story went on, this first impression I had of her diminished. She’s pretty fierce, smart and humble. She shows off these qualities throughout the story.

The plot is riveting. As I mentioned earlier, that opening prologue just snatched me up. Then the story begins, and it slows down a bit. It picks right back up when Charlie meets the handsome and mysterious Max one night when she goes clubbing. Charlie is instantly both attracted and scared of Max. (I know, go figure. Let’s all fall for the mysterious bad boy.) She has the vague inclination that he may know about her secret, especially when she starts seeing him around a lot more often the days after their initial meeting. Usually, I do a big eye roll when the main character falls for the mysterious guy. In this case, it’s different because Derting changes perspectives throughout the story. While Charlie’s perspective is the most predominant one, we do get some chapters in the point of view of other characters. Having those chapters with Max’s perspective gave him more dimension and offered the reader some dramatic irony and a chance to truly understand him. He wasn’t the flat mysterious boy anymore. Another interesting perspective was that of the Queen’s. The Queen is the villain in this story. She’s ruthless, heartless, tyrannical, and very old. She’s dying and needs a proper female heir to the throne. Charlie somehow factors into the Queen’s plan to continue her reign.

The book has a dark tone. It’s dystopian with magical elements. The magic isn’t overbearing, we’re left to focus on the political state of society more than the magic.  It works. While the magic is cool, I was far more intrigued with the rebellion going on than anything else. As we work toward the end, the pacing starts to speed up, and you’re left with a satisfying conclusion… That is until you read the epilogue. The ending works seamlessly into the epilogue. It’s not a crazy, irrelevant cliffhanger smacked onto the end, like I know many authors like to do. The epilogue is good, but it does leave you hanging and desperately wanting the second. Luckily, Derting just announced that The Pledge is the first of a trilogy.

The Pledge will be released into bookstores on November 15th. Support our site and click here to pre-order it from the TYF Store!