The Selection by: Kiera Cass – #1 in The Selection series.
AGE GROUP: 13 and up// GENRE: Dystopian/Romance// AMOUNT OF PAGES: 327// RATING: 3/5
YA BOOK
summary
Thirty-five girls get picked to be in The Selection. By getting picked you enter a world of glamour, princess dresses, and you get to live in the palace with the royal family! What more could anyone want? Well, that’s just it, America Singer wants nothing more than to not be apart of The Selection. She wants to stay home with her family who is suffering from poverty and continue seeing her secret love, Aspen, but instead she puts her family before her, and joins The Selection.
She soon learns that The Selection isn’t all one big dress-up party and in fact the royal family is constantly threatened by rebel attacks. Things start getting violent in this fierce competition and America just happens to be there in the running for a crown she doesn’t care for or want.
When she meets Prince Maxon she starts to rethink her life plan and maybe after all this is the life she could have in the near future, and for the first time America doesn’t think that’s such a horrible thought.
review
I surprisingly liked this book quite a lot as a late summer read!
The writing wasn’t anything that I particularly gravitated to just because it was simple and nothing very extravagant, but for a summer read I liked that. Everything moved quite quickly, as in a scene didn’t last very long so everything was fast paced. But what I didn’t like were the endless rebel attacks. As I said, the writing was simple but so was the plot; it was flimsy–weak–and it was not very interesting in my opinion. In the actual Selection I thought that there would be cool tasks to win Maxon over or something, but all they did were go on dates, fight with each other, hide from the rebels, and do public interviews. I didn’t find that fun in the slightest but for some reason I somehow didn’t get bored while reading it. Cass held my attention for most of the book until the very end and then I was on my toes waiting to pick up the second book. So I know that reading The Selection wasn’t all that bad and I’m quite happy that I did! I just wished the plot was more complicated.
The characters in this book didn’t have me falling head over heels for them but I did have some favourites and some that I absolutely despised. I felt like the characters weren’t well sculpted and for me that’s an issue because when I read books I love to find a character that I can relate to and I didn’t find that in The Selection. Each character did have their own feautures but everything felt too similar. The two main men in the story weren’t described as anything but handsome, and I didn’t like that. They were both good guys but there wasn’t anything to their personality, it felt bland. Anyway, I didn’t love the characters in this book and that’s a huge fall back for the novel because characters are part of what creates the book.
I’m giving this book 3/5 stars for the sole reason of being an easy and enjoyable read. It didn’t frustrate me (usually) and I always got what was happening. I was never confused except for the whole story and history behind the rebels because that was so random and legit made no sense! Also, I did not enjoy the petty drama between all of the girls in the Selection because it was useless and only annoyed me. There were no big female bonds except for America (the main character) and the one friend she made but there was also no girl power because all of the girls were constantly going at each other and it honestly made me so aggravated. The lack of girl power was one of the only things that made me want to put this book down but besides that it was a fun read!
I know this review was very short compared to others but I didn’t have a lot to say on this book other than it was an enjoyable read (which I’ve mentioned countless amount of times… sorry)!
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