The Elite (The Selection, #2) by Kiera Cass

Synopsis:

 

The Selection began with thirty-five girls.
Now with the group narrowed down to the six Elite, the competition to win Prince Maxon's heart is fiercer than ever—and America is still struggling to decide where her heart truly lies. Is it with Maxon, who could make her life a fairy tale? Or with her first love, Aspen?

America is desperate for more time. But the rest of the Elite know exactly what they want—and America's chance to choose is about to slip away.

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Okay, everyone and their mother knows how trashy this series is. So instead of rehashing that, I want to write seriously about this book for a moment.

When I first read this book in 2013, everyone's biggest issue with the book was its weak dystopian world-building. The U.S. becomes a monarchy? Seriously? But now having read this book again in 2018 while living in the U.S. under the Trump administration, Cass's world doesn't feel so impossible...

I don't pretend that Cass's world-building is good. It's not. It's still a YA romance shrouded under a flimsy dystopian veil. But the fact that Gregory Illéa's conquest of the U.S. through his extreme wealth and subsequent creation of the caste system in order to permanently keep poor people in poverty seems like a real possibility for the world I live in, now that scares me. I think, because of how the impossibility of Cass's world doesn't feel so impossible anymore, this novel is relevant to the age Americans are currently living in.

Trust me, if you had told me a week ago that The Selection series, the EPITOME of trash YA, would feel scarily relevant to my life, I would've said you were full of shit too.