Rating: 2.0/4.0
A few hundred years into the future, North America crumbles and becomes a new country called “Illea”. In this new country, the Prince must choose his future bride from a lottery of potential princesses. Another dystopian read has found its way to the shelves and it is none other than The Selection by Kiera Cass.
The Selection revolves around a girl named America Singer who is (you guessed it!) a singer. In this society, people are separated into different classes based on their profession, under eight different castes. America, along with the other artists, is with the Fives. The entire premise of the story is that 35 girls are all striving to become Prince Maxon’s princess in order to elevate their status to a One.
A forbidden love story gone wrong, a love triangle that breaks all the rules, and a promising start – The Selection has the potential to be a new good read. However, given its concept of a life-changing lottery and rebellion from outside a seemingly perfect society, its uniqueness as an idea had already been fleshed out by numerous other authors within the past two years alone; the Selection has some stiff competition in the ranks of other Young Adult reads.
The story runs along while giving very little away; readers are left hanging at the end of the book. The entire book gives the readers the history and state of equilibrium in the society that Cass has created, and not much else. The characters – America, Aspen, Maxon – are left without the readers, in fact, having a lot to go on.
Understandably, in a series, readers are never going to get the whole story in a single title, but The Selection was just a little too thin on the plot.
The going barely had enough time to get tough, before the readers found out who had to get going. The Selection will become an adaptation television series later this year or early in 2013, in time for the release of the next title in the series.
