‘The One’
by Kiera Cass is the third book of the five part series called ‘The Selection’
of which I have read the first three. In the first book, we meet America Singer
(yes, that’s her actual name), who gets into the Selection along with thirty
four other girls. The Selection is quite literally the Bachelor, the only twist
being that the Prince of the Illéa is the Bachelor. In the second book, it’s
the second part of the Selection, where the group is narrowed down to six
girls. And the third book mainly focuses on the conflict between the Prince and
the King of Illéa.
Personally,
I really didn’t enjoy this book, in fact I despised all three of these books.
Why did I keep reading it if I hated it so much? I’m honestly not sure, I think it was because I had a glimmer of
hope that this series would redeem itself. I thought this series couldn’t get
much worse than ‘The Elite’ (the second book in this series) which spent the whole book going on about a
love triangle that was so boring and predictable it was painful, but I was
wrong. ‘The One’ was so much worse. The characters didn’t have any growth and
at the end of book, I felt like I still didn’t know who they were because their
personalities were all over the place, especially America Singer. The author threw
out so many concepts that she had built up, for example the ‘rebels’ that were
fighting against the Selection inevitably didn’t add anything to the plot. I
can handle a few clichés, but this book was just a giant cliché, alongside the
classic over exaggerated mean girl who would probably never exist in
real life. The ending of the book was even worse still and extremely
disappointing, with everything being jammed into the last chapters, when really
it could’ve covered half of the book. (SPOILERS) It was very anticlimactic, as
she just killed off the main villain (the King) and other valuable characters
like it was nothing in one pointless scene that lacked emotion.
If you want
to read this book, which I highly suggest you don’t, you’ll have to throw out
the thought of having developed characters and a well-paced storyline. I have
seen other reviews on this book and they are fairly high for what I think this
book is worth, but each to their own. There’s honestly nothing noteworthy about
this series, so don’t waste your time.
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Sounds like somebody binge watched The Bachelor and then decided to waste their time writing three tomes of completely hackneyed crap.
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