Review: The Selection by Kiera Cass - Leona

Summary 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 the palace and compete for the heart of the gorgeous Prince Maxon.

But for America Singer, being Selected is a nightmare. It means turning her back on her secret love with Aspen, who is a caste below her. Leaving her home to enter a fierce competition for a crown she doesn't want. Living in a palace that is constantly threatened by violent rebel attacks.

Then America meets Prince Maxon. Gradually, she starts to question all the plans she's made for herself- and realizes that the life she's always dreamed of may not compare to a future she never imagined.

As soon as you start The Selection you are overwhelmed with information. I found it hard to concentrate on the rest of the book after reading the first chapter. It felt like the author wanted all this detail out of the way so she threw it at us all at once without giving us a chance to digest it. 

When I read about this book my head screamed "The Hunger Games". However when I began reading I knew that it was a lot different compared to The Hunger Games. The feel throughout the book was much lighter in The Selection compared to the dark theme of The Hunger Games. 

America Singer is, well, a singer. I'm firstly going to comment on her name, I don't like it. Moving on, America was just not my sort of character. She spends a lot of her time saying how normal looking she is especially when people call her pretty. She was rather whiny and seemed to be a bit of a shell character without much of a personality of her own. At times I did quite like her though.

The world that they lived in didn't feel very real to me. It may have been the fact that information is thrown at us all at once rather than gradually that made it unrealistic. I just could quite grasp the concept of the world of The Selection at all and it made the book harder to read.

We have quite a lot of secondary characters. I just wonder if there was a need for some of them to be there. They didn't really play much of a role in the plot. 

On the other hand, there was a few moments that I did actually enjoy. The Selection was, at times, an enjoyable read. It wasn't really for me.