The Selection

wait… why am I obsessed with this😭.

4.5⭐️

This book has a real undertone of The Hunger Games about it - future society changed by war in which the society has been segregated. A young girl is selected from her village to compete in a competition which could end her family's struggle for food and survival.

Sounding familiar but the similarities didn't end there, girl is in love with a boy from her village but is whisked away by a team who make her over in preparation for the competition. This competition however is not a fight to the death but one to decide whom the Prince of the Kingdom will marry and 37 girls need to vie for his hand.

I really loved this book probably because it had all the strong plot lines that made me love The Hunger Games so much. I liked America the lead character and loved the whole love triangle between America, her first love Aspen and Prince Maxon. I'm going Team Maxon!!

A set of 3 books in the series will see the story to it's conclusion, with book 2 ‘The Elite' being available now and 3 still to be published. I cannot wait for more but at £1.99 I felt this book was worth it but I'm not sure the 2nd is worth its current price tag of £4.98 - I will be waiting a while to see if it drops just a little

Incredibly trite. Good for tweens who still love fairy tales but are taking an interest in fashion and love triangles. For anyone else you've got to be pretty bored.

There are little scraps of distopian future, reality show, and politics tropes and more focus on any of those could have made it more interesting but mostly it's all about fashion, bland friendships, and PG makeout scenes. The narrator dodges saying words like “sex” or “rape” but the topics come up multiple times.

I listened to the audiobook, which is incredibly lackluster. The reader has just one “male” voice, so it can get confusing on the few occasions two males are actually interacting. Her “female” voice is her normal speaking voice, so there's no variation there. Spoken aloud, the names of the two love interests, Maxon and Aspen, are similar enough that I got confused several times.