Excelsior, fellow book lovers!
Sometimes I wonder why my books haven't asked for my parents' blessings yet.
You don't need to know who I am. Only that I like things. Like books. I am also a bookseller, which is why my hands are so dry to the point of them peeling off like snake-skin.
This blog is meant to be as ridiculous and funny as it is serious. I love books, reviewing them, discussing them, and analyzing them, but I'm also a fan of awesome things that make me laugh.
This does not include cheesy romantic comedies or lemon-flavoured candies. These are neither laugh-worthy (usually) or awesomely yummy (ick).
Sunday, 22 April 2012
Book on Trial #26: The Selection
NOTE: I want to remind readers that it is important to give all books a fair chance despite negative reviews and controversy (see linked article)/the author or the author’s agent being horrible with public relations. And that is what I did.
Author: Cass, Kiera
Title: The Selection
Keywords: Stupid teens, competition, cheap rip-off of The Hunger Games, The Bachelor.
Recommended For: Non-feminists, people with little dignity.
Rating: 
Sentence: I sentence Kiera Cass to a season of The Bachelor in which everyone is selected to be dropped off on a deserted island and are made to fight to the death to be the lone survivor. But then as a prize the survivor is made to marry some asshole she may or may not like.
Review: I wasn’t really blown away by the cover, although I’d love to twirl around in a dress that freaking huge.
It’d probably go down like this though:
But really, I was excited for this bizarre twist on dystopian caste systems and competing each other (yet again). What I found, however, was a cheap imitation of The Hunger Games meets The Bachelor meets A Little Princess (competition against nation of numbers for prince’s hand in marriage, but with a little homesick orphan-like story time/bonding in their boarding school the palace). I wasn’t sure whether to be pissed I had wasted my time or just relieved I had found something else to read to cleanse my mind afterward.
I settled on being productively angry at the world, through a chart, which I made to compare The Hunger Games to The Selection. 
Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of things different between the two books. Mostly how America is a total fucking push-over and signed up to change her life for her boyfriend’s piece of mind. Then when he wanted her back she realized she had to see the Selection through because she is doing it for herself. WHAT A LOAD OF HORSESHIT.
I have determined that America clearly doesn’t know what the hell she wants and needs to realize that if she is oh so good at giving the prince political advice and is just as pretty as everyone claims she is, she needs to consider becoming a goddamn symbol of rebellion. Because I feel like that’s what will happen. Everything was so freaking predictable in this book.
Even Aspen ending up in the palace as a guard. Puh-lease, I saw that even before Cass wrote this book. Oldest freaking romantic-triangle-coincidence in the book. Literally.
What really bothers me, though, is that America lets herself continue this competition and being pressured into falling in love with Maxon, who she seems to like as a friend. Oh wait, I forgot, it’s impossible to be just friends when it’s the prince, right? And I’m not saying she should go back to Aspen because, let’s get real, his ego is bigger than Kiera Cass’ agent’s ego. In any case, Aspen’s pride comes before his need for food, which totally blows Maslow’s hierarchy of needs out of the water. Speaking of inaccuracies, the caste system is totally contradictory. On the one hand, I’m imagining a real life caste system, but then you hear of a five and a six watching frakking television and having enough money for popcorn, at the end of the day. And even the eights seem to find a way to live and not be considered complete untouchables. What is this; a Disney version of caste divisions?
I think the worst part of all of this was finding out, upon finishing the last paragraph, that this was only the first volume in what was promising to be one of the worst teen series’ (I’m assuming trilogy) I have ever read out of seriousness (not reading for the lulz).
Apparently the southerners are going to kill everyone in the palace before Maxon makes a decision. I won’t stand for such tomfuckery. This series is seriously over in my head and I won’t hear of it again, much like Kelly Keaton’s Darkness Becomes Her (that one made me physically vomit).
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