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A review by raisingself
The Crown by Kiera Cass
3.0
(Review for both The Heir and The Crown since I read both in two days)
Hands down The Crown is the best book in the Selection series!
Think a slightly more woke and feminist bachelorette meets fairytale. The lead character, Eadlyn, is 100% annoying the first third of book 1 (The Heir) but there is true character development by the end of The Crown.
I found the first 3 Selection books detailing her parents: America Singer and Prince Maxon’s The Bachelor meets Cinderella story with a dash of dystopian melodrama contrived, wrought with chauvinism and lacking depth and overly drawn out (how they squeezed out 3 books still shocks me). Much of their story was so campy that it was more annoying than endearing.
Eadlyn’s love story is endearing and interesting. Not obvious like her parent’s and slightly more nuanced. She’s a first born twin girl whose parents changed the law to make her the heir “despite” her gender. She is the first generation after the 8 tiered numbering caste system that still haunts her kingdom with systemic discrimination and former caste bias.
Eadlyn starts as a brat that takes her future role as queen seriously but is not in touch with the people and agrees to the selection out of a duty to her parents to help be a distraction for a nation on the cusp of rising up because of social unrest. She doesn’t plan on falling in love and thinks she may be able to get out choosing a husband for a few more years. She wants to prove she can be queen and doesn’t want that to be overshadowed by her being a woman and the first female sovereign.
The reader is not 100% sure who Eadlyn will fall in love with or of her heart. I was presently surprised by this book and really enjoyed it for what is was: a lovely simple YA fairytale love story.
Trigger Warning: one non-graphic scene of near non-consensual touching
Woke Meter: issues with slightly stereotyping of LGBT characters and a mostly white washed cast with a singular token black character that is poorly and inconsistently developed.
Hands down The Crown is the best book in the Selection series!
Think a slightly more woke and feminist bachelorette meets fairytale. The lead character, Eadlyn, is 100% annoying the first third of book 1 (The Heir) but there is true character development by the end of The Crown.
I found the first 3 Selection books detailing her parents: America Singer and Prince Maxon’s The Bachelor meets Cinderella story with a dash of dystopian melodrama contrived, wrought with chauvinism and lacking depth and overly drawn out (how they squeezed out 3 books still shocks me). Much of their story was so campy that it was more annoying than endearing.
Eadlyn’s love story is endearing and interesting. Not obvious like her parent’s and slightly more nuanced. She’s a first born twin girl whose parents changed the law to make her the heir “despite” her gender. She is the first generation after the 8 tiered numbering caste system that still haunts her kingdom with systemic discrimination and former caste bias.
Eadlyn starts as a brat that takes her future role as queen seriously but is not in touch with the people and agrees to the selection out of a duty to her parents to help be a distraction for a nation on the cusp of rising up because of social unrest. She doesn’t plan on falling in love and thinks she may be able to get out choosing a husband for a few more years. She wants to prove she can be queen and doesn’t want that to be overshadowed by her being a woman and the first female sovereign.
The reader is not 100% sure who Eadlyn will fall in love with or of her heart. I was presently surprised by this book and really enjoyed it for what is was: a lovely simple YA fairytale love story.
Trigger Warning: one non-graphic scene of near non-consensual touching
Woke Meter: issues with slightly stereotyping of LGBT characters and a mostly white washed cast with a singular token black character that is poorly and inconsistently developed.