DISCLAIMER: The following review is absolutely scathing mostly for humor’s sake and contains spoilers so if you’re a big fan of The Selection series you probably shouldn’t read it.
I came into The One, the third book in The Selection series by Kiera Cass, knowing I would only be happy if one of three things happened:
1. America gets with Aspen
2. America just does America and tells all of these men trying to decide her life for her to go away.
or
3. America, Maxon and everybody else in The Selection (with the exception of maybe Celeste) are murdered by rebels who then abolish the caste system, start a democratic government and establish free elections where the people elect leaders of their own volition.
So pretty much I knew I would be really mad because…
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(SPOILERS AHEAD)
Nope. No democracy here. The political situation in this novel was written by someone who has maybe read part of the Wikipedia article for Marxism. I think that the monarchy was kept in place because Prince Maxon is just so cute? Isn’t Maxon so cute? Who needs DEMOCRACY when you have a perfectly cute monarch? Maybe it’s the whole “American” thing but I sort of have a problem with rooting for the monarchy.
Okay, lets start with a quick summary of the series. We’re in post-apocalyptic America where the monarchy has installed a numerical caste system. 1 is royalty, 2 is pop stars and models, 3 is not famous rich people, 4 is business owners, 5 is artists (because LOL we all need artists in dystopian society), 6 is maids/servants, 7 is factory workers and 8 is homeless people. Our heroine, also America, is a 5. In the first book she gets chosen for The Selection– a nationwide dating competition where the crown prince chooses his bride. Yes, it is The Bachelor.
There is a lot of violence and distrust in this society because OF COURSE. There are two groups of rebels. There are Southern Rebels who just want to kill everyone indiscriminately and then Northern Rebels who are less violent and want to change things peacefully.
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But that’s not as important as the romance. Before America comes to The Selection she dates Aspen, who is a 6 and therefore taboo for her to date, but he breaks up with her because they live in a dystopian society, his family is hungry and it’s just too hard to run away with your teenage girlfriend. America takes this incredibly personally (she takes everything personally) and when she gets picked for The Selection she leaves him. At first, she doesn’t like Prince Maxon but that changes in a matter of 20 pages and when we get to The One she’s in love with him. TWIST: Aspen has traveled cross-country to be a palace guard to protect her from rebels who raid the palace every day. So, I guess there’a love triangle. That’s about as concise as I can get with this plot.
On with our review. I’m gonna split it into two parts: DYSTOPIAN PLOT and ROMANCE PLOT.
DYSTOPIAN:
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To her credit Mrs. Cass has crafted an interesting, if flawed, setting for The Selection series. The monarchy has a very tenuous leadership over a war-torn land ravaged by rebels. The first thing that really happens in The One is that the Northern Rebels (the less violent ones) ally with Maxon purely out of good faith that he’ll end the caste system because he seems like a good person. This is a dystopian, war-torn society and the leader of a large rebel group allies with a teenage prince who isn’t even king yet just because he seems chill. That’s it. “Oh, your dad sucks but maybe you will be cool, right?” Yep, that has never NOT worked for revolutionaries. Good plan, rebels, I’m sure that will work out for you.
Later– Maxon and America travel outside the palace to meet the Northern Rebels. I truly don’t really know why they don’t use the telephone because everyone does have telephones in this book. The most important part of this trip is that it’s revealed Maxon, the crown prince of a country, has NEVER left his house. With Aspen’s help, Maxon and America go to the nearby village that is described as shockingly similar to Skid Row. The only plot device-ish thing that happens on this trip is America gets shot (not fatally, unfortunately) in the arm and is a HUGE wimp about the whole thing. She whines for at least 20 pages.
The next important thing that happens is about 50 pages later when the Southern Rebels start murdering innocent people in each remaining girl in The Selection’s caste until one of them leaves the competition. The girls all refuse to do so even though innocent people are dying. That makes sense. They are 17 and Maxon is a super hot prince who can make them a queen.
What doesn’t make sense to me is that the ADULTS around here don’t say “Maybe we should call the dating competition off because y’know– war.” Later we find out the rebels has killed 300 people around the country because nobody dropped out of the Selection. 300 people! America says “Wow, that’s a lot!” and then Maxon and his father the king say “Meh,” and just wave their hands dismissively. America is just like “Oh yeah OK” because she is 17. To give you a sense of scale: 300 people is almost double the amount of people who died in the Oklahoma City Bombing which was perpetrated by terrorists, which, technically the rebels are terrorists.
After the rebels/terrorists kill 300 people because four teenage girls won’t drop out of The Bachelor you know what the palace decides to do? Have a tea party!!!!!!!! It’s like the French Revolution is playing out before our very eyes. At any moment America will say to post-apocalyptic Skid Row “Let them have cake!” and then, hopefully, the proletariat will haul them everyone off to the guillotine.
At the Tea Party, America asks the Princess of Italy (yeah) for money to arm the the Northern Rebels because America Singer is Ronald Reagan and this is the Iran-Contra affair. Seriously, she arms a rogue rebel group. Then later the King is like “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID WITH THE PRINCESS OF ITALY” and America is like “Oh yeah I forgot about arming the rebels.” How do you forget about that? Don’t worry though– the king doesn’t know about the contra he’s just mad America is friends with Italian people.
There is no villain in this book apart from the murderously vague “Southern Rebels” who are probably rioting in the streets because of the horrible conditions their government has left them in because the army is so ill-equipped. When Maxon sends six guards with America when her dad dies (of natural causes SNOOZE this is a DYSTOPIAN NOVEL WITH MURDEROUS BLOODTHIRSTY REBELS) it’s like a HUGE deal because the army is so understaffed. Six people! SIX!
ROMANCE:
At this point: the book pretty much stops focusing all together on any post-apocalyptic setting and instead focuses on romance. I’m all for romance, I liked Twilight. The romance portion of this book revolves around a love triangle between America, Pricne Maxon and her hometown boyfriend Aspen (Gale Hawthorne, basically) who has followed her in order to protect her.
Aspen dumped her before she left but almost immediately apologized numerous times, deserted his family to move across country to protect her, did everything she said including sneaking her out of the palace at her behest and saved her life multiple times. America halfheartedly dumps him at the end of the Elite but still gazes longingly into his eyes, holds his hand and takes comfort in him whenever she needs it. Good old Aspen, she always says. She also openly flirts with Maxon in front of him.
That is what is so terrible about America as a protagonist: she knows what she’s doing is wrong. There’s a lot of this type of inner-monologue: “Maybe I shouldn’t flirt with Maxon right in front of Aspen because Aspen is still in love with me and that’s kind of inconsiderate. Nah, I think I’m gonna do it anyway.”
For most of the trilogy Aspen is devoted to her I guess in order to create any sort of momentum or suspense in the love story even though it is SHOCKINGLY obvious she will pick Maxon at the end. Towards the end of the book, Mrs. Cass quite literally sticks Aspen with some random maid just to make sure everyone has a happy ending!!!
Oh, yeah, Maxon. He is super cute and a prince and he seems like a fun jokester, I guess? He is also dating four women at once, something he never has to apologize for. He throws petty temper-tantrums regularly when people tell him what to do even though he is a royal with a responsibility to people other than himself. He won’t stop a dating competition when his country is falling apart because “WHAT ABOUT HIM?” Mostly Maxon sits around whining about how hard his life is as a Prince who never leaves his enormous mansion. The most dynamic thing about his character is the complicated relationship he has with his abusive father who conveniently dies at the end so Maxon can become king.
The entire ending of this book was very convenient. Aspen has a maid-bride, Maxon finds out about Aspen’s connection to America and is mad but gets over it and they get married. Aspen walks America down the aisle which WEIRD. Kriss turns out to be a good rebel but who cares? America’s dad turns out to be a good rebel but also who cares? America gets mad at Kriss for being a rebel even though her dad was one? There’s one last rebel attack but all of our protagonists live. The important thing is Maxon marries America so now he can take care of her forever!
My question is: why set this book in a dystopia? The book is ONLY about America winning the Selection and marrying Maxon so why does there need to be rebels? Why is this set in the future? Why anything? I could get down with a book only about America winning the Selection but what I don’t like is pulling in rebels, a caste system and a dysfunctional society for essentially no reason.
At the end of the book America asks Maxon if he plans on ending the Caste system and he says “Maybe later.”
Rating: 2 out of 10 (2 just for the fun of the laugh-out-loud plot holes)
Publisher: HarperTeen (May 6, 2014)
Source: Amazon
ISBN #: 0062059998
Genre: Romance, YA
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