Book ReviewBlog 3: Book 26: The Selection

Not Hermione, though. I will never be tired of Hermione.

I read The Selection Series this year. (On the wonderful recommendation of the Epic Reads team) It's a good story, but not, in my opinion, a great one. But it is a series I am willing to devote time to. A series I want to keep investing in because I had gotten tired of Katniss-s and Tris-s and Cassias and Tessas and Lenas and Clary-s and Kahlessi-s and all of them. I was tired of reading about girls, teenage girls, who seem to have endless bravery, endless power and drive and fierceness. Not because I don't like these girls, trust me, I do, I think they are so interesting and important and cool! So freaking cool!
But I'm not one of those girls. I don't live in a post apocalyptic world or future US, I don't live in some distopyian  society that wants to control everything I do. I live a good, easy life, and I like it. I was kind of like America from The Selection. I like my life and I don't feel a need to start a revolution.
Neither did Katniss though. She was just a girl, and the revolution, the uprisings, they weren't her idea, she had to be sold on them, to be the face of a cause that wasn't really hers. So maybe that's not the difference.
Maybe it's the worlds we live in. Katniss and Tris and America all come from worlds where unspeakable things have happened. A world like other parts of mine, but worlds and worlds away. I don't know what kind of girl I would be in those places either. That's something that ties them together, bravery when called upon, something I don't need.
Maybe it's just the way they are portrayed. Tris is endlessly brave. Truly. Katniss is endlessly loyal and protective. America is stubborn, and scared, and in love. It's there that I find her most relatable. Out of all the completely crazy shit that she goes through, she has the natural sense to be completely scared shitless. It's hard to relate to girls that learn how to use guns and arrows as weapons when they are only teenagers. It's more comforting to read about a girl that is handed a gun and it feels foreign and scary in her hands. It's more natural to read about a girl that feels like she just wants to go home when she is thrown into a world she did not ever expect to end up in. Even if home was hard and complicated on its own. I hate America because she is such a flip-flopper. One minute she loves Aspen, completely and forever, then she meets Maxon and falls for him. She spends books, books!, trying to decide who she loves and changing her mind every other week! It is completely infuriating. And something I cannot fault her for (even though I do). When have we as humans ever truly been constant on every thought for every minute? It's something that drives me crazy about myself, and about other real life people I know.

But compared to Tris when her love for Four never, ever, wavers, it's almost a relief.

I like America because her fight is not with the world, not yet, not really. Her fight is within herself, to decide what she wants, and fight for it, fight to get it, fight to keep it. And figuring out what I want, sticking to it, that's where I am in my life.
So it wasn't the best book I've read this year, but it was one I want to read more of, characters I want to know better and a world I want to visit again and again. (Which is good because there's two more books.)