Book #38: The Selection by Kiera Cass

I have seriously seen this book around for a year or more, and never forgotten it because of that unforgettable cover (such a beautiful dress!). But I've avoided it because after I read the blurbs about it I decided not to read it--all I kept seeing about it was that it was a cross between the Hunger Games and the Bachelor--and the main character is named America Singer. That seriously is enough to turn me off. America Singer? That is the dumbest thing I've heard in forever. But my sister-in-law Kristen persuaded me to read it, if only to make fun of it with her, and it seemed like the perfect beach read while we were hanging out at Bear Lake all week for the Leininger family reunion. So I read it, and on the one hand hated it and on the other hand really enjoyed it--enough that I did end up reading the next two in the trilogy (although it TOTALLY should not have been made into a trilogy--seriously only had enough material to be one book).

In this dystopian version of future America, a monarchy has been set up and the masses are divided into numbered castes, each caste being assigned a specific career path (the higher castes getting the better jobs and more money). The prince, in order to choose a bride, has a Queen Esther/Cinderella type lottery for all the young women in the land to submit themselves as his potential new princess. So of course America Singer, a 5 and a musician, submits herself, despite the fact she's madly in love with Aspen (seriously, these names), and she's chosen as one of the few to go to the palace and meet prince Maxon to see if she's the prince's bride. She meets Maxon and immediately goes into angry chick mode, fighting with him and somehow making him fall in love with her anyways, and they become friends despite the situation. America stays at the palace as one of the prince's favorites as the pool narrows down.

There are so many ridiculous things about this book that it's hard to describe it all at once. The thing I hated the most was how obnoxious the dialect was. Cass obviously does not know how to talk if that's how she thinks normal conversations between people go. When she meets Prince Maxon for the first time, he calls her "my dear," and she says something like, "Don't call me your dear when you're keeping me in your gilded CAGE!" Seriously? Also, the whole plotline seemed pretty far-fetched to be set in the future--sure, maybe that happened in Queen Esther's time, but a super-strict caste system and lottery for the prince in future America? And Cass's version of American history is completely hilarious--America gets so in debt to China that China invades and makes it the American State of China until people revolt and set up the monarchy of Illea. Yes, that seems very logical and believable. I really shouldn't have liked it at all, but for some reason I was driven to find out what happened between America and Maxon (because she obviously will end up with him, despite her dumb obsession with Aspen), so I kept reading the sequels despite it all. This was the best plot of the three books, but probably the worst writing of the three (she seems to get better as time goes on).