The Elite by Kiera Cass (Review)

  Series: Selection Series #2

Genre: Dystopian

Book Length: 336 pages

Publication Date: April 23rd, 2013

Publisher: HaperTeen

Format: Hardcover

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Synopsis:

Kiera Cass’s The Elite is a must-read for fans of dystopian fiction, fairy tales, and reality TV. This sequel to The Selection will enchant teens who love Divergent and The Bachelor.

In America Singer’s world, a bride is chosen for the prince through an elaborate televised competition. In the second book of the Selection series, America is one of only six girls left in the running. But is it Prince Maxon—and life as the queen—she wants? Or is it Aspen, her first love?

The Elite delivers the adventure, glamour, political intrigue, and romance readers of The Selection expect, and continues the love triangle that captivated them.

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The blank spaces contain spoilers that can only be read by highlighting them with your mouse.  

-heavy sigh- Okay, this book. If you follow me on goodreads and have been following my progress on this book, you should know that ~99%~ of the comments I made were me yelling at America (if you want to see them, click here to go to see all of my statuses). I even was so frustrated at one point, one of my really good friends was wondering if this was worth reading, and I will talk about the problems I had in this book.

I want to quickly cover the positive aspects in this book before I talk about the negatives.

The main part that I really like/love about this series is that these books are so fast and addictive that you just want to finish them all in one sitting. Kiera Cass writes in a way that just makes you want to read all these books and not stop until you reach that final page. If you are looking for a fast and fun, lighthearted series that you can just fly through, I think I would recommend this to you for the dystopian.

Another thing that I like is that the dystopian aspect to widen more and we saw how Greggory Illea was at the beginning/founding of the country the characters live in. I also loved how we got to see more rebellion attacks and I know that with the rise of the Northern and Southern attacks and I can't wait to see how this will play out in the One.

Now, let's talk about all of the moments I did not like in this book.

The main part, that I think everyone who has read this can agree on, is that America Singer was so frustrating in this book. Oh dear god, like I said earlier in my review, almost all of my statuses was me just yelling at how stupid/frustrating/idiotic America was. Especially her presentation at the end, oh I really reacted there and I think that I wanted to murder her. Why didn't she just do one on music or the arts, or something that WASN'T to remove the caste system. I know that you couldn't think of any ideas, but that was literally the stupidest decision you've ever made.

I think my main problem with America, is that she can be easily influenced. When she's with Maxon, she is happy and feels like she wants to be with him forever. But then Aspen comes along and he completely changes her opinion so that it seems SHE would go mentally insane if she stayed with Maxon and that he is a complete bastard and tyrant like his father is, just because he doesn't understand the concept of her wanting to make her own decision.

But still, America will believe and fall for any trick or trap. She also makes a lot of irrational decisions in this book, like during the Northern attack she just runs deep into the forest and she is lucky that she didn't get killed when that girl noticed her. And she constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY goes back and forth with deciding where her heart lies, with Aspen or Maxon. It's like she's bi-polar when it comes to that decision.

Even though America was the main problem, I also wanted to murder/slap other characters

Let me go over the order of when I wanted to murder or slap characters:

America

America

Aspen

America

Celeste

America

America

Aspen

America

America

Aspen

America

Clarkson

America

Clarkson

Clarkson

Yeah, I wanted to murder/slap some characters a billion times in this installment.

Another problem I felt like I had when reading this book was that it felt like it had that second-book-syndrome where it dragged out. It honestly felt like this was more on character and relationship development than action and the plot, but for this series it makes sense so I'm letting this pass by.

Do I think that this is a necessary installment in the series? I think you can just go to the One knowing a few things, but if you really want to you can read this. 

So, I think that's all I have to say for the Elite by Kiera Cass, the second book in the Selection series. I don't know what to rate this, I think I am going to ponder on this a little bit, but right now I'm going to give this a 2.5/5 stars. I still love this series, but this book really frustrated me, mostly thanks to America making irrational decisions. I think I might change a rating later when I am no longer so frustrated at her and all of the negatives. I will still read the One so expect a review once I finish the book and the whole series, but this I did not like.