The Selection

ness33 - To be perfectly honest, this isn't a great book. Guys, it's romance, it's your typical romance book mixed in with some danger and a jealous other girl.This is set in dystopian America, after some war tore the country apart and rebuilt everything. New America has castes and royalty, castes determine where you live and your lifestyle. They're very important. Ones are the richest people, the kings and queens. The lowest caste is Eight, the poorest of the poor. America Singer (main character) is a Five, still poor but not to the extent of starving. She gets chosen for The Selection (basically The Bachelor) and competes with other girls for Prince Maxon's affection. This book really irritates me in many, many ways. The way America thinks irks me so much. Her character is sarcastic and bratty. I love sarcastic characters (ehem, Magnus Bane, Alec Lightwood, Percy Jackson...) and I really did try to love America too. She is somewhat a relatable character, she is "real", as in; She loves food, she isn't a total air-head, she fights for the lower castes. She's got a likeable side to her but her other side overbalances everything and i end up hating her. Okay, at the start, she's all homesick, she didn't even want to be in The Selection. She tries to get out of her room because it "was suffocating her" and into the gardens. She meets Prince Maxon on the way as she tries to break out, they have this super long conversation (not really) which ends up in her being really rude and kicking him where boys don't like to be kicked. Then he escorts her to the gardens and they have this super long and boring conversation of what she likes and fiwbfihgfiewbgv. After a few more days/weeks, she's seen as a "favourite" of Maxon's. When Maxon starts hanging out with the other girls in the competition, she starts getting jealous and feels as if the "special thing" they once had was "broken" and he didn't like her anymore. She forgets that she's not the only girl in The Selection and it makes me so mad on so many different levels. I hated the main character. And it's so hard to like a book if you hate the person it revolves around.

April 9, 2012
A cross between The Hunger Games (minus the bloodsport) and The Bachelor (minus the bloodsport), this trilogy launch employs multiple conventions of the dystopian romance genre—strong-willed heroine, heart-wrenching love triangle, far-future setting divided by class. That said, it’s a lot of fun. In a post WWIII U.S. divided by caste, teenage America Singer and her family are Fives, struggling musicians and artists. In love with a Six, America is headed for a life of servitude and hunger, until she is chosen for the Selection—a contest through which Prince Maxon will pick his princess. The Selection brings America instant notoriety and prestige, but also thrusts her into a ring of jealous, desperate girls all trying to win the prince’s heart. Cass (author of the self-published The Siren) deftly builds the chemistry between America and Maxon, while stoking the embers of America’s first, forbidden love. Headstrong and outspoken, America is an easy heroine to root for, and the scenes where she tries to fit in to her new royal life are charming. A TV drama based on the books is in production. Ages 13–up. Agent: Elana Roth, Red Tree Literary.

June 1, 2012

Gr 8 Up-Reminiscent of Shannon Hale's Princess Academy (Bloomsbury, 2005) and Ally Condie's Matched (Dutton, 2010), Cass's debut novel weaves an engrossing tale of high-stakes competition and the emotional turmoil of being true to oneself. In this first installment of a dystopian trilogy, fiery-haired beauty America Singer, 17, meets all the criteria to enter the lottery of a lifetime, a reality-TV-type competition for Prince Maxon's hand in marriage. Her mother believes that she has what it takes to prevail, but America wants nothing to do with the prince. She has secretly been seeing Aspen, whose family members have been servants and friends to the Singers for years. Grappling with her family's socioeconomic status and the impact of the caste system's prejudice on her star-crossed love, America finally concedes to enter the lottery and earns a spot among the lucky 35 contenders, every girl's desire-except for America herself. The sincere prose conveys her minimalist character and reluctance to compete for the affections of a stranger. Fairy-tale lovers will lose themselves in America's alternate reality and wish that the next glamorous sequel were waiting for them.-Jamie-Lee Schombs, Library Journal HC

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