Book Review: The Crown (The Selection #5)

About The Book:

  Title: The Crown (The Selection #5)

  Author: Kiera Cass
  Pub. Date: May 3rd, 2016 
  Publisher: HarperTeen
  Pages: 279

  Genre: Young Adult, Dystopian, Romance

  Rate: 2/5 stars 

Synopsis :

When Eadlyn became the first princess of Illéa to hold her own Selection, she didn’t think she would fall in love with any of her thirty-five suitors. She spent the first few weeks of the competition counting down the days until she could send them all home. But as events at the palace force Eadlyn even further into the spotlight, she realizes that she might not be content remaining alone.

Eadlyn still isn’t sure she’ll find the fairytale ending her parents did twenty years ago. But sometimes the heart has a way of surprising you…and soon Eadlyn must make a choice that feels more impossible—and more important—than she ever imagined.

Review:

I feel like this is the end of an era. This is the last Selection book, or at least I can hope anyway. This book disappointed me in comparison to the other The Selection books and I really only enjoyed the last maybe 50 pages. I still liked the process of The Selection, but I feel like the same magic and romance was absent in this book that made me fall in love with this series in the first place.

As far as characterization, there was a huge change in Eadlyn's attitude from The Heir to The Crown. In The Heir, she was entitled, materialistic, and pretentious. She wasn't really like this at all in The Crown, which really surprised me because I didn't see her go through any severe traumatic hardships to change her personality that severely? I'm sorry but personality traits don't change like that and especially not that quickly. I understand the intention behind it - Ms. Cass wanted to demonstrate the transformation that Eadlyn is going through. However, I wasn't a fan of the execution.


There were really only 2 members of Eadlyn's selection that I felt we got to know and I didn't like that. Did anyone who read this feel like that as well? I feel like we knew a lot of the members of America's selection very well and we knew their personalities! So when we didn't get to know these boys as well as them I was disappointed. And since you really only know 2 of them, it really wasn't hard to deduce who she was going to choose.

Truth be told, I never liked the story of Eadlyn as much as I liked America's story. And I was thinking about why this is. Honestly, I believe it's because America and Maxon's story was very angsty and while it was obvious to the readers that he loved America the best, it maybe didn't always seem obvious to them. So, there were times where I might have questioned who Maxon was going to pick and it had me worrying for America and his future together! Compared to The Heir and The Crown, where Eadlyn really never shows interest in any guys for the majority of the book. I'm sorry - if she doesn't show much interest in this then why should I? It also didn't help that this was in Eadlyn's perspective so we knew literally everything she was thinking - we were never 100% sure what was going through Maxon's mind during his selection. Also, I feel like this series has a lot of unnecessary material. It was nice to have a book about America and Maxon's daughter - it was. I just am not sure that it took two books for her entire story to be told especially because, as I said, she has an 'I don't care' attitude for the most part.

“Maybe it's not the first kisses that are supposed to be special. 
Maybe it's the last ones."

I fell in love with The Selection with the first book, and grew even more obsessed with the series with The Elite. While I found The One a tad repetitive, I still enjoyed that one as well. These last two books lacked the high-stakes romance that their predecessors had and I think that's why I found my interest lacking with them. The idea of The Selection is still something that I will always love and I will never quite look at the show The Bachelor in the same way again. Kiera Cass built an empire with this series and I really hope that she's going to work on something new next because I'm sure it'll be very unique!

- Jocelyn