The Elite

The Elite
by Kiera Cass

Genre:  Young Adult
Published:  4/23/13 by Harper Collins
Pages:  323
Format:  Hardcover

My rating:
2 out of 5 stars





The Elite is book number two in The Selection series by Kiera Cass.  This teen dystopian romance is about a girl named America who is chosen (forced) to be a part of The Selection, a Bachelor type program run by the king and queen used to choose the country's next princess.  Prince Maxon is charming and the apple of all the girls' eyes, including America.  However, America is torn between the charming prince and her childhood love interest Aspen, who just happens to be stationed as a guard in the palace (and right outside her room too, how convenient!).

I thought the first book in this series, The Selection, was a lot of fun to read in a guilty pleasure sort of way.  It is a combination of The Bachelor and the Hunger Games and pretty much every other dystopian teen romance out there.  Fun, but nothing overly original or thought provoking.

But this book, The Elite, was just not that fun or good.  I found it to be really obnoxious, as America spends the WHOLE book debating whether she loves Maxon or Aspen and questioning whether they return her affections, confused as they may be.  Did anything even happen in this book???   I think not. As far as the plot of the story, I felt like book two ended with everyone in pretty much the same place as book one.  

I am curious to read the final book, The One, just to see if anything is ever going to happen to move this plot forward.  My feeling is that The Elite was just a filler book, biding time until the final book was released.