Welcome to the Moonlight Library’s 30 Day Animorphs Challenge!
Despite Project Animorphs in 2013, I clearly do not talk about Animorphs enough.
This particular challenge is taken from the Heck Yeah Tumblr Challenges archive on Tumblr.

Day 15: Three moments that broke your heart:

Animorphs was a pretty emotional ride when I re-read them as an adult last year in Project Animorphs. I found myself surprised by how emotional I was reading Marco’s journey, especially considering he’s my least favourite Animorph. If you’d asked me this question before I re-read the books and was basing this on how I responded as a child, my first answer would be different.

The first moment that broke my heart was in Book #30 The Reunion, where Marco sets a trap for his mother Visser One and is then force to carry it out all the way when Jake and Cassie are unexpectedly put out of action. Marco is so brave throughout the entire book and near the end he takes the plunge to ram his mother off the top of a mountain while he’s in goat morph, trying to murder her so she’s no longer a slave to the slug in her head. He’s so convinced he’s going to murder his own mother that he even reveals his true identity, and that’s when my heart broke. When Visser One and Eva both realised Marco was an Animorph.

The second moment that broke my heart was in #34 The Prophecy, when Cassie is sharing her brain with Aldrea. I’ve always thought of the Hork-Bajir Chronicles as one of the best romances I’ve ever read, and I Aldrea and Dak are my non-core OTP. I love them so hard, and their tragedy breaks my heart. I was particularly heartbroken when Aldrea, after learning to trust Cassie a little, has a nightmare about Dak and her doomed son Seerow. She wakes up and Cassie can’t help but be curious, and she pulls away in her grief. Her husband and son are long dead, and so is she, she’s nothing but a memory, and essence, not a real, complete person. But she still has nightmares, and that broke my heart.

The third moment that really broke my heart was in the final book, #54 The Beginning, when Rachel dies. She asks the Ellimist if she mattered, and he says that she was brave, and good, and yes, she did matter. Rachel was my favourite character and a role model, so having her die really upset me but having the Ellimist confirm how important she was even when she wasn’t one of the four he hand-picked to be part of the team really broke my heart. She was brave. She was good. She mattered.

Other honourable mentions include every time Marco faced his mother, when the experimented on Hork-Bajir died in Cassie’s barn (#36), when Tobias was tortured (#33), when Cassie was forced to complete a mission by herself and then perform brain surgery on Ax (#39), when Rachel was faced with the choice to murder David (#48), and when Jake sent Rachel after Tom (#53). I’m probably missing a few.

About Nemo

A lover of kittens and all things sparkly, Nemo has a degree in English Literature and specialises in reviewing contemporary, paranormal, mystery/thriller, historical, sci-fi and fantasy Young Adult fiction. She is especially drawn to novels about princesses, strong female friendships, magical powers, and assassins.