Bloody's thoughts - The Selection (Kiera Cass)

The Selection

... is a YA dystopian novel by Kiera Cass and book one in the Selection trilogy which consists of The Selection (duh), The Elite and The One. And since I am almost finished with The Elite, I don't want to have Siege and Storm 2.0, but actually have both books reviewed...

What would be better than a good old short review? o/ (AKA lemme just copypaste my old goodreads review and pretend it's something new.)

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Volume 2: The Elite

Damn it. I really thought I would hate it. To be honest, I WANTED to hate it, just because I wanted to laugh about it's ridiculousness.

So I was pretty much blown away when I found out I actually enjoyed this book.

Don't get me wrong. Though I didn't find major plot holes or things that just didn't make sense, The Selection is definetely not a good novel. The characters, especially America and Aspen, were far too Mary-Sue-ish, there was too few action for a dystopian story - we didn't even get to see ONE rebel! - and so on.

So, what makes me like The Selection so much? Can't be the overwhelming plot since it basically wasn't there or the awesome romance since I grew to hate Aspen and there wasn't much ongoing between Maxon and America until the end.

I liked the world. The caste system isn't something I've seen much in dystopian novels, at least not in this way. I know you cannot compare The Selection to The Hunger Games but I'll do it anyway. I'm a bad girl, I know. In Panem there are the districts and of course, district 1 is wealthier than district 12. But there is no real caste system. It's not like someone from 12 isn't allowed to do anything for money besides serving someone from a wealthier district (that'd be a Six in The Selection) or that everyone in 11 is homeless like an Eight in Illéa. It was refreshing.

Also, America was, if she didn't whine because of Aspen, a nice main character. Sure, she was way too perfect and beautiful and blahblahblah, but it's not like I couldn't take her character.

Aspen, however, can go to hell. Nuff said.

Volume 3: The One

Maxon, despite being a peeeeerfeeeeeect *coughcough* prince had his flaws, even if it weren't many. I liked him way better than Aspen, though sometimes I really wanted to kill him for what he did. I'm just gonna say Olivia. -.-" How rude was that?

The minor characters were fine too, aside of Celeste, who was a huge bitch and kind of the cliché 'so perfect everyone loves her but actually she is meeeeeeaaaaan' opponent.

As for the plot... Like I already said, there was none. Two rebel attacks, but the girls stayed in safe rooms so we didn't see much of them, and a few photo shootings. I had expected that would drive me crazy, but really, it didn't. The America-and-Maxon-scenes were sweet, the growing friendships between the girls were nice to follow and so on. Still, I can't take the America-and-Aspen-scenes, but thank god or Arceus or whatever there is, he didn't reappear until the last, 60 pages or so.

Overall a very nice read and I look forward to The Elite!

And also, these covers are gorgeous. Look at these covers, guys.