I was going to write this as a review, but quickly realized that I have almost nothing good to say about this series. So here I am, writing an editorial rant on Everything Wrong with The Selection (By Kiera Cass). Enjoy. 

I’d like to start with a disclaimer: I respect the author and anyone who loves this series. It takes a lot of hard work to write a book, and I know this was probably a labor of love for Cass. The series itself has a huge following and is very popular, and by stating my opinions I am in no way trying to undermine those of anyone else. Also, spoilers. This is a rant, because no one wants to listen to me say all of this. I have not bothered to cut out spoilers, so if you care about reading the Selection with a fresh, unbiased slate, maybe stop reading here. With that said, the Selection trilogy was absolutely reprehensible. 

Where do I even start? The shallow, one dimensional side characters? The disgusting love interests? The forced economic reform/rebel plots? The main character in general? I guess we’ll start at the beginning, with the premise itself. Here’s the plot description, from Goodreads: “For thirty-five girls, the Selection is the chance of a lifetime. The opportunity to escape the life laid out for them since birth. To be swept up in a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels. To live in a palace and compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon.” Already raises red flags. 

For one, why on earth would a monarchy so intent on keeping the castes seperate have a competition like this? Sure they could rig it, but that would just defeat the original point, to make a show of equality when everyone knows it’s a farce. I guess it’s just bread and circuses for the people of Illea, but it mainly just goes to show how passive and ignorant all the characters are, that this would sound like a fair setup. Second, “To compete for the heart of gorgeous Prince Maxon?” Seriously? There are so many problems with this. It already sounds like a Hunger Games ripoff crossed with The Bachelor, but with anything interesting or worthwhile completely cut out. Not to mention the fact that we are once again pitting young women against each other for the heart of a prince. Sounds completely healthy and fair, right? 

I guess that leads us right into those “young women.” But maybe I should call them “plot devices” instead, because that’s literally all they were. None of the conversations they had with each other involved even just light bonding or showed healthy female relationships. Instead, they spent most of their time together talking about ALL their secrets and shoving the details of their relationships with Maxon in each other’s faces. I’m pretty sure this book only barely passes the Bechdel test. 

Marlee, for example, leaves the Selection and it’s pretty well implied that the only reason she’s still happy after being whipped and sent down to the eight caste is because she at least has a husband now as a consolation prize. You could argue that she showed independence of thought by falling in love with someone else, but you could also say that her whole character was based on her relationships with men literally the entire time. 

And of course, there’s Kriss, probably one of my least favorite characters. Sure, she’s sweet and nice and truly in love with Maxon, but has absolutely terrible judgment and is just as passive and shallow as everyone else. The revelation that she’s part of the resistance felt like an afterthought, like Cass had realized she’d forgotten to give Kriss any actual motivation for living beyond her love for Maxon, and so turned her into a resistance spy with no previous setup and then never mentioned it again after America confronted her. What really annoyed me about her, however, was her love for Maxon. He literally was kissing and going on dates with thirty five girls in an official capacity, and she somehow didn’t find that disgusting (the same could be said for all the girls in the Selection, but honestly, Kriss loved him the most. Not even under America). He was using Kriss as an emotional crutch every time America rejected him, not to mention literally only keeping her in the Selection as a failsafe if America fell through. 

I could literally go through all the girls and tell you everything I hate about them, but I’ll spare you. Instead I’ll tell you the one good thing you’ll probably find in this whole post: I liked the way the girl’s relationships stayed strong throughout the competition. Even though there was no complex development in their friendships (they kind of just arrived there, introduced themselves, and were all suddenly best friends with only a few exceptions for the mean girl tropes – whoa I just realized that I have literally forgotten the mean girls’s names), they were good examples of women becoming friends and not treating each other as romantic rivals in as situation where that would be easy to portray them as. So. Quiet golf clap to Kiera Cass. 

However, this one good thing is completely overshadowed by the ladies’ relationships with the “gorgeous Prince Maxon,” as he is described. They completely ignore the fact that he’s willingly acting as the “judge” to decide which of these women (who all have value in their own way) is the prettiest and smartest and most talented, and yet is already biased towards the one “special” girl who “likes pants” and “insulted” Maxon when she first met him. *roll eyes.* They also all start acting ridiculous to get him to notice them, especially the two mean girls, and spend literally every minute of every day gossipping and humble bragging about him. And this doesn’t even take into account the numerous flaws and red flags he gives off. 

Maxon is a whirlwind of hatred-inducing behavior, but let’s start with the way he treats the girls. He gets overly familiar with them immediately by calling each of them “my dear” right off the bat. I literally could not even visualize him saying this. I’ve only ever heard old men call like, their grandkids or something “my dear,” definitely never 18 year old “gorgeous Princes.” Not to mention the fact that he said he’s not going to be able to remember all of the girls’s names right away. I mean, excuse me? These girls are all here to be your playthings until you finally choose your favorite and everyone else goes home with soul-crushing inferiority complexes. The least you can do is make an effort to learn their names before the all arrive at the palace, ready and waiting to idolize your every move. 

Even worse, he plays with their feelings worse than America played with his (more on that later.) He treats them all as if they’re special while telling America behind the scenes that she’s the only one he loves and that he’ll do everything on her timeline. Two-faced much? I understand the pickle that he’d supposedly in (even if it was strange that the only princely rule he follows is the one that makes everything harder for everyone else) – He loves America, but he’s not sure if America loves him, so he needs to keep some of the girls around as backup wives in case she doesn’t want to stay. Fine, whatever, it’s your duty as a prince, but did the fact that some of these girls might not instantly fall in love with you ever occur to you when you were picking everyone for the competition in the first place? How is it fair to let America choose if she wants to stay or go, and all the other girls have to do whatever Maxon says whether they like it or not? It was literally in the contract that they couldn’t say no to him, but noooo, not creepy at all! 

And speaking of creepy, (I’m going to get specific here) that one scene where America caught him kissing one of the mean girls in the hallway? Still can’t remember her name, by the way. Maxon never actually explained that in a way that made sense. He said something about how there were certain things he wanted that America couldn’t give him and all this random stuff that only dug himself a deeper hole. It basically sounded like America wasn’t kissing him enough so he decided it’d be fun to kiss someone else on the side instead. Hate to break it to you, Maxon, but you can’t just go around kissing whoever you want and have it not be creepy. It just doesn’t work that way. Don’t tell Kriss you love her and then turn around and tell America you lied to Kriss and kiss her instead. Don’t kiss that one mean girl and then wonder why America’s mad. Not only is it idiotic, it’s a pretty sociopathic move. People actually care when you do that stuff to them. 

Of course, America doesn’t care. Kriss doesn’t care. That one mean girl doesn’t care. Noooo, it’s “gorgeous Prince Maxon.” He’s a special little snowflake and can do whatever he wants. It must be our fault if he’s also “in love” with thirty five other girls at the same time as he is with me. 

In conclusion to my Maxon hate-rant, he’s a genuinely creepy guy. I am eternally surprised every day by the Maxon fan girls out there, so if you think people like that really are “gorgeous:” Just because he’s supposedly hot and has cool scars on his back, daddy issues, and is a prince, doesn’t mean you can trust him. Maybe make sure he has a personality first. That works in YA novels as well as real life! Neat trick, right? (Check disclaimer at the beginning if you actually do happen to be a Maxon fan). 

So we’ve decided that Maxon is definitely not the right choice in this love triangle. Which must mean that Aspen, the final corner, is! Right? Riiiiight? 

Nope! Because why would there ever be an actually good option? Aspen looks good at face value: the boy next door, childhood best friend, has always supported and looked after America, and is a man in uniform! How can anyone resist that? The answer, my friends, is pretty easily when you’re faced with a creepy privileged prince instead. In that case, you apparently end up “resisting” cruelly and deceptively. Before we get to America’s faults, however, let’s discuss Aspen’s. 

To start, he’s actually just as manipulative as everyone else! He guilts America at literally every turn, sneaks into her chambers and brings her into secret rooms, and acts like it’s her fault she’s fallen in love with someone else and moved on after he clearly broke up with her! Because what’s not to like? And he breaks up with her for a stupid reason too. This angsty boy doesn’t care that his girlfriend made him a nice dinner. In fact, the dinner was a ruse to undermine his authority as “man” in the relationship and point out his inability to provide for America! That America, what a rascal. 

The way he keeps showing up back in her life after breaking up with her honestly cracked me up. I literally laughed out loud when it was revealed that he was not embracing the girl in the audience when America saw him before she left. No, he was catching her when she fell at the exact moment America happened to look over! What an upstanding citizen! The obvious plot manipulation here was exceedingly annoying, but not as annoying as the way he randomly shows up in the palace as a guard and starts desperately bothering America about getting back together in the exact place where she’s supposed to be capturing the heart of the prince for the good of her family! Really? Reeeaally?! His neediness was *one of* the things that almost drove me to DNFing a few times. 

Aspen’s return to America’s heart finally brings me around to her own issues. Let’s ease into it, shall we? Starting with her ignorant, almost cruel treatment of both Maxon and Aspen. After starting to fall in love with Maxon, she has nothing holding her back from staying with him than her own denial of her feelings and her reluctance to be queen. These justifications for making him wait were honestly totally okay with me. She was being honest and not leading him on in any way. And then, Aspen comes back. Now, her reasons for making Maxon drag out the Selection process include the fact that she’s not quite over Aspen. Not only that, but she’s leading Aspen on as well and making him feel like he has a chance by not only kissing him but telling him multiple times (everytime she feels at all jilted by Maxon) that she still wants to be with him. This is completely unhealthy for both boys. Aspen has to live up to the impossible standard of competing with a prince. Maxon has to compete with a boy he doesn’t even know he’s competing with. Yep, that’s right, America neglects to tell him that not only does she still love her ex, but he’s also sneaking around the palace under Maxon’s own employment! 

Every idiotic fight between Maxon and America leads to her running back to Aspen’s arms, and Maxon back to one of the other girls he likes to pretend he loves. As soon as Maxon and America get back together, America ignores Aspen for a few todays until the cycle repeats again. That sounds healthy, right? And of course, all this tension with Aspen leads to a final fight with Maxon when he finds out, setting him up to take America out of the competition and choose Kriss (even though you know that’s not going to happen. At all). Overall, America’s blatant obliviousness to the needs and feelings of others draws out the emotional trauma way longer than it needed to be. 

And of course, there’s America’s individual flaws. Starting with, predictably, her name. America? America Singer? Really? Let me guess, she’s a singer (which, by the way, is a skill she uses maybe twice in the whole trilogy). Every time somebody said her name, (“I love you, America.”) I cringed deeply. I couldn’t get it out of my head that they were referring to the country, and it was just too much. 

One of my least favorite things about a lot of the dystopian YA out there is that the authors try way too hard to make their leading women “strong female characters” while still making them beautiful and desirable and “normal teenage girls.” Often times, this fails miserably. You can’t just have a character say over and over, “I’m not pretty, I’m not pretty,” and then give her a makeup scene so that everyone else in the book is like, “You’re so pretty!” (And yet of course, she still denies it). That’s not “a normal girl.” That’s a girl who’s unnaturally attractive who the author force-fed humility in an attempt to make her less annoying to readers. It doesn’t work. Not to mention the way these girls will be leaders of a revolution or the spark of an uprising, and yet perpetually worried about love triangles and romance. Or the extremely annoying, “not like other girls” trope. Not only does this create an impossible standard for women (“I have to be unique and tomboy-ish like Katniss for boys to like me”) but it also takes down other women at the same time. What’s wrong with the “other girls” that in order to be “strong” you’re not allowed to be like them? Who says that liking dresses and makeup and “girly things” makes you less strong? 

Unfortunately, America is the embodiment of all these YA tropes. She literally tells her family at least three times within the first chapter (no kidding, I counted) that she’s “not pretty,” and then the reader gets to suffer through everyone she knows affirming that she’s the most beautiful and gorgeous girl they’ve ever seen. And of course, she heads to the palace and gets a makeover scene literally every day. All of her positive traits feel forced, as if the author is just telling us she’s a good person while we watch her kick puppies or something (not that she ever did that, obviously). She’s kind to her maids and doesn’t make them dress her up in the morning. Is that supposed to make us like her? Being nice to your servants is not the exception, it should be the rule. Common human decency does not make you an angel on earth, America. And how could I forget! America likes pants. How strange and special! She must be a very strong female character (I loved how they made such a big deal about America getting pants from Maxon and then never mentioned it again. I guess America fell to the dress peer pressure). The way she’s always concerned with getting rid of the castes and the fact that she and her family have always gone hungry? Then why do you describe her life at the beginning like that of a middle class American family? They’ve got TV, a fridge, a house that fits their whole family, and even the food that America so desperately needs. How come she was able to make Aspen a whole chicken dinner on such supposedly meager provisions? If you were taking that much food from your parents on such a low budget without them knowing about your little secret boyfriend, it would probably be pretty noticeable. 

Her concerns about changing the social class system and making resources more available for the poor is a perfectly righteous goal. But the idea feels more like a subplot blown out of proportion than an actually well-thought-out and important target. The fact that they were able to start reforming the country with zero effort after King Clarkson died (another hilarious name, I kept reading it as Kelly Clarkson) was enough to show me that this huge social issue was really just an afterthought for the author. 

In fact, when I started reading The Selection, I though the castes were going to spark a full on rebellion, with America as the face. I expected a Hunger Games style third book, with America and her motley crew of rebels fighting back against a corrupt empire. 

I was wrong. 

America literally stayed in the palace the entire time. The entire time. She had zero action and spent each of the rebel attacks either holed up with all the other princesses or making out with Maxon. The southern rebels had almost zero significance other than Cass suddenly realizing that maybe good rebels wouldn’t be so violent, so she added actually bad ones so we could still understand the northern rebel cause. They were essentially a plot device. The northern rebels, however, were just as useless. They popped up a few times, threatened the monarchy, and left. The only reason Maxon decided to change the decades-old caste policy was because his precious America felt sad for the poor people. Not for any properly moral obligation, not for the obvious public support, but for America’s forced concerns. Congratulations, Maxon. Prince of the year. 

Every time someone brought up the cause, it was quickly overshadowed by some other problem involving America’s love life or her relationships with the other girls. This trilogy truly could’ve been a really poignant commentary on the power of standing up for what’s right if it had just allowed the characters to care. 

Illea really was messed up, but the story of how it got that way was more full of holes than the dress Celeste ripped (Hey, I remembered her name!). Their history describes a continuation of ours, similar to the Hunger Games. Apparently, America was so in debt to China that China decided to invade! What did they think, America was just stockpiling the money and refusing to pay it back? And how did America not fight back? I’m pretty sure we have one of the biggest military budgets in the world. The logic here just doesn’t make sense. 

And so we become… what was the American State of China? The United States of China? All I remember was it was an absolutely ridiculous name. And if China had really taken over the U.S, they would have added an extra 3,794,100 square miles to their already huge 3,705,410. How could their government, resources, and laws supported a 200% increase within that time? The only part of this origin story that makes sense is that the Americans eventually fought back and won their freedom, but in a just as stupid way. Apparently, Russia decided that it would be a good time to attack both China and the United States of China (whatever it was called) at the same time (or did they attack another country too? All I know is, Russia made a dumb move). Honestly, I can assume that China was probably weakened by the recent invasion and the addition of an extra country, but still. Really, Russia? Really? 

Predictably, everyone fought back and somehow things worked out and the U.S.C. seperated from China to make their own country once more. Now, instead of just going back to the U.S.A. and keeping their sound constitution and laws, they decided to start over entirely. Not only did they name the country after a random citizen who kind of helped them win the war (last name Illea, first name, totally forgot. Not a good sign if all these characters are so forgettable), but they also changed their entire social system to include the castes, remaking their economic and government systems in the process. And how do you just become a monarchy? Yeah, your daughter married a prince, that doesn’t make you King of another country, George Illea (Was it George?). And how did the new “Illeans” accept a monarchy, after living under a democratic republic, then a dictatorship? I think the benefits of the former are pretty easy to see after living under Chinese rule AND with their revolutionary past (see what I did there? Revolutionary? Revolutionary war?). Anyway, it would have been easy for Cass to leave their history mysterious and vague as Collins did with The Hunger Games, but instead with get this rich, beautiful, and entirely unbelievable history. 

In conclusion, I would actually recommend reading The Selection. Though the reasons to resist are obvious and clearly outlined here (I’ve probably even missed a few), it honestly was fun to read and almost became a guilty pleasure. While I do expect at least a little bit of quality in my YA, I do understand how hard it is to write a book and how easy it is to miss things that may seem obvious to readers. I appreciate Kiera Cass for bravely putting her work out into the world. While you really shouldn’t take anything these characters do as anything close to reality (Girls, don’t fall for a Maxon. Or even an Aspen, for that matter), it was an interesting and experience and I was hooked to find out what would happen next.