Author: Kiera Cass
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Format: Paperback
Pages: 339
Publication Date: 4/24/2012
Publisher: Harper Teen
★★★★☆
The first book in the captivating, #1 New York Times bestselling Selection series! Discover a breathless fairy-tale romance with swoon-worthy characters, glittering gowns, fierce intrigue, and a dystopian world that will captivate readers who loved Veronica Roth’s Divergent, Ally Condie’s Matched, and Lauren Oliver’s Delirium.
For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape a rigid caste system, live in a palace, and compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon. But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her, and competing for a crown she doesn’t want.
Then America meets Prince Maxon—and realizes that the life she’s always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined.
There's a formula for these sorts of books. Take one part inexperienced author, add a dash of cloudy* female protagonist, combine together with a "dystopian" setting, and voila! You have a young adult "dystopian" story.
I'd like to say that I'm not being fair, especially considering how much I enjoyed this book and how much effort I'm putting into not being influenced by the opinions of others, but that's how I feel about this book.
It's how I feel about a lot of these young adult fantasies.
I need to take a moment to explain why I use "dystopian" in quotes in this case. The setting of The Selection is futuristic and set in a time when the people of North America no longer have the privileges that we currently enjoy.
It rides on the coattails of stories such as The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Delirium. I honestly can't blame the author for wanting to take advantage of the popularity of these stories. Considering how much I love dystopian settings, I read this book precisely for that reason.
I'm a sucker for a good dystopia.
There's two problems with The Selection, if you're a fan of dystopian stories.
The first is that the setting isn't believable. As with most of these teen dystopias, this is not a story that could happen. I'm not going to discuss my personal political views, but I will establish that there are some wonderful dystopian stories written for adults that are believable, things that could actually happen.
Most of the popular teen dystopian stories would never happen in the real world. It does not, in my opinion, mean that they are not dystopias, only that they exist within the realm of pure fantasy.
The other problem with calling The Selection a dystopia is that it lacks some of the necessary components. Dividing the people by caste lacks the "oomph" of the oppression demonstrated in other books in its category.
What I'm trying to say is that the society of The Selection just isn't that bad, and the story takes place outside of it for the majority of the story.
You need to know this if you're selecting a story based on its genre. Readers who are looking for good dystopian stories may want to give this one a pass.
Or maybe not, because I was looking for a good dystopian story.
What The Selection is is a good story, period. There are a lot of things wrong with this book. More things wrong than right, if I'm honest with you. But the story captivated me in spite of those things.
There's not a lot to say about what I loved about this book. Suffice it to say that the story pulled me through the novel from start to finish in a single day. That means something, at least to me.
If you love a good story and you can overlook a lot of flaws, I think that you'll probably like this book.
But out of fairness, I do need to speak to you about the flaws. If you thought I'd already done that, you've made a mistake: This book is full of them.
The main problem with The Selection is that the setting is underdeveloped and recycled. It feels remarkably like the setting ofThe Hunger Games, without putting all members of a particular caste into a single location. Each of the eight castes has its own purpose, the jobs that the caste does throughout Illea.
What I'm trying to express is that the setting of this book could be "any" dystopia in young adult fiction. It's not unique and it's underdeveloped and Cass could have done more, gone further, worked harder.
I'm a fan of richly textured worlds. When I write, that's what I focus on. So the world disappointed me. This cost the book half a star in rating.
You also need to know that this book reads as though written for middle schoolers, at best. Given its classification as a young adult novel, I would have liked to see language meant to be read by someone above the sixth grade reading level. I was reading at that level in the second grade.
These were the two main things that bothered me. I've read a lot of reviews of this book over the last two years since I plopped it onto my "to be read" list, and now I'm fighting the influence of those reviews.
Because there's one final thing. The nail in the coffin of many young adult novels.
America Singer, the story's protagonist, is poorly developed.
There, I said it. I hate myself for it because at the end of the day, I like America Singer. I like Prince Maxon, and Queen Amberly. I like Marlee. I like May and Aspen. I like these characters, but they're lacking something.
The most important something; They're lacking flaws.
Oh, I know that America has her moments, but she's so good in nearly every way that I'd be astonished if the prince chose any other girl in the story to be his wife. I've not read that far (yet), but given that this is her story, the outcome is predictable.
I'd like more tension. I'd like a stronger female lead. I'm so sick of these weakling protagonists. I want more from my heroines. It's not that I'm all about girl power. A phlegmatic female is almost critical to a good romantic story, and this one is nothing if not romantic.
Strength is more than a willingness to stand up to the monarchy (temporarily, at that!); It's the heroine's ability to think for herself. It's a heroine with a strong set of moral beliefs who's willing to change the world to see something happen. It's a girl with a backbone, with real gonads.
All these girls whose main purpose is to feed their male counterparts exhaust me. Give me girl power. Give my daughter, when she's old enough to read these stories, a reason to believe that she has the power to change the world and to make something remarkable out of herself.
Because come ON! Girls are more than just wives for some guy.
I can be kind of traditional about gender roles. I like them, especially in fiction. I'm not looking for masculine girls in the stories that I read. What I want is a girl who is believable and a setting that makes sense.The Gender Game does a better job of this than The Selection (and yes, I've read it as an ARC).
Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about.
Girls in the world of The Selection take the caste of the man they marry. So a girl can either marry up or down, but a boy cannot change his caste except by buying a higher caste level for himself and his family.
At times in this story, it's apparent that the girls in this world exist primarily to be pretty and fall in line. I'm not saying that the girls in this book don't have personalities, because most of them do. The book wouldn't get very far if they didn't. I'm just saying that it's sexist and that at least in the first book in the series, that doesn't seem to be a problem with the characters.
There are a lot of things to dislike about this book. Enough that I very nearly rated it three stars. By my own rules, I couldn't give it less than that because I did enjoy the story. By my own rules, in all seriousness, I had to give this book four stars.
By my own rules, I should have given it five, because I know without a doubt that this is a series I will read again and again when I need a good "snuggle down and seek comfort" story to read.
I'd like to be able to hate this book for all of the things that are wrong with it, but I can't. I loved the story. I want America to succeed. I'm so desperate for the next part of the story that I want to head to the library today to get the next book in the series, and I already have another book on the go.
So I'd say that for me, this book was a success. If you can't get around the flaws in this book, that's fine. If you think you can get past the flaws, this book could work for you, too.
* By "cloudy" I mean that one could not pin down her temperament. She is all at once phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine, and occasionally melancholy.
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