The Bachelor, But Better

Find more Kiera Cass books.

Kiera Cass is an author I discovered about a year or so ago. I was cycling through my Amazon book recommendations (a great way I've discovered books in the past) and happened to come across a book titled The Selection. I read through the book description and it sounded like a fun read, so I bought it and it's sequel The Elite on pure gut instinct. As it turns out, I was not sorry.

I bought the books along with several others, so I didn't get to them right away. When I did, I. Couldn't. Put. Them. Down. I blazed through them, bought the third one, titled The One, and blazed through that. Here's a basic premise of the series. It's like the reality show, The Bachelor, but--as I tell those I recommend the book to--it's so much better than that. Let me explain. It does have a few things in common with the reality show: there's a number of girls all competing for the hand and heart of a boy, they go on "dates" with him, and slowly the group is whittled down until only one, The One, remains. The book series has a few big differences. The One will also be Queen, as the boy is Prince Maxon who is looking not only for a bride but someone to help him lead his country (so the stakes are a bit higher). The girls form true friendships, not the catty, back-stabbing alliances that seem to be promoted by the producers of all reality shows. Don't get me wrong, the girls don't all like each other, but we do get to see a bunch of the characters form deep, meaningful relationships with each other. In my opinion, this is far more satisfying. Lastly, and this is a huge difference, the characters are actually 3-dimensional. Partly this is due to the fact that these are books and we don't have to rely solely on dialogue and what we see people do in order to learn about them. We get to see their motivation, learn a little about their true selves, and actually understand them. One of the girls is quite the manipulator, but rather than leave it at that, the author allows you to start to see the reasons for her actions and in the end become very sympathetic towards her. I rather think that reality shows are more like:

Girl: "So what's my motivation?"
Producer: "Your character's a conniving bitch."
Girl: "Ok...and?"
Producer: "No, that's all."

After all, it's all about ratings, not about character development.

I think that it's also fair to mention that woven into the first three books is a secondary plot about a monarchy in trouble, a building rebellion, and a prince that really wants to do the right thing. One little tidbit I enjoyed was the extremely complicated relationship that Maxon has with his father. Not all families are prefect, not even royal ones. All of this an interesting nuance to the main plot and adds definite danger to a rather benign process of the Selection.

There are a total of five books in the series. I mention the first three above. Book four is called The Heir and begins the story of Prince Maxon and his wife's (I won't say who!) daughter, Eadlyn. Now it's her turn to hold a Selection, just as her father did, to find herself a husband and the future Prince Consort. The Crown--pictured at the top of this post--finishes Eadlyn's story and her Selection. Just as with the first three books, I could not put Heir and Crown down. In fact, I started The Crown at about 7:00 at night and had to finish it before I could go to sleep that night. The books are fun. They have characters you really come to love, sometimes despite your best intentions. And they remind us of the gut-wrenching, flying, scary, exciting sensation of what it's like to "be young and in love."

If you haven't figured it out already, I definitely recommend this series!