I Read The Selection—Is BookTok Right?
Written by Kai Voorhees
When I heard of this book series, I was immediately interested. I had seen the book on BookTok a few months ago. One user claimed it was “an amazing, swoon worthy read”. I took this as a sign to look into it more. After discovering it was a dystopian book I immediately knew I wanted to try and read it.
The Selection series follows a girl named America Singer. She lives in Illéa,United States in a time after World War 3. The United States went back to a monarchy and the town is now very dystopian. There are even ranks of rich to poor people which determine your jobs. When the Prince of Illéa turns of age, the royal family has what they call, “The Selection”. In the selection, a bunch of girls compete to marry. Here's how America explains it: “This was the way they did it with sons. Princesses born into the royal family were sold off into marriage in an attempt to solidify our young relations with other countries. I understood why it was done—we needed allies. But I didn’t like it. I hadn’t had to see such a thing, and I hoped I never would. The royal family hadn’t produced a princess in three generations. Princes, however, married women of the people to keep up the morale of our sometimes volatile nation. I think the Selection was meant to draw us together and remind everyone that Illéa itself was born out of next to nothing.” (Cass 8) One day, she is sent a letter where they ask her to be a part of the selection.
This is your warning that there will be spoilers for the first book in this article. So if you haven’t read it, go read it and then come back to this article.
I went into reading the first book thinking it was fully a dystopian with a few romance sideplots. However, I quickly discovered that the dystopian plot (which is half of the book) is very poorly written. The other half (the romance plots) are also kind of poorly written. Despite this, I wanted to keep reading to see if my opinions changed.
When America gets to the palace, I wasn’t expecting America and Maxon’s first time meeting. She was having a panic attack inside and just needed air. When she ran down to the doors, the guards wouldn’t let her out. She was sobbing uncontrollably and begging that they let her out. Then prince Maxon comes and tells the guards to let her into the garden. This is the first time they met. While reading this scene, I cringed quite a bit.
The next few times that they meet also include very interesting things. Such as, America giving Maxon a knee to the groin, America yelling at Maxon, and so on. This confused me. This was the prince and you just kneed him in the groin…and he still likes you? I didn’t know how that was even possible.
If you haven’t noticed already, I very clearly do not like America.
Who else do I not like? Aspen.
The stunt he pulled breaking up with America in the treehouse right before she went to the selection was very confusing to me. If I am being honest, I didn’t understand his reasoning. If you did, feel free to let me know why he did it through the “contact” button on the top of this website.
Personally, I think Maxon is a great guy (though too good for America) and Aspen is an annoying guy (but so is America so they are perfect for each other).
It was one I couldn’t put down. At most parts, it did completely have me hooked. So was BookTok right when they said it was a great book? Despite my obvious critiques for this book, it was a good book. I think that if you just want something that’s a quick read and you don’t think much about the little details like I did, then this would be a good book for you to read. What do you think?
Posted on May 7, 2026