The next day, America’s mother offers her the chance to work on her own for the first time and keep half of the money she makes in exchange for signing up for the Selection. That night, she dreams Aspen is dressed in white and adorned with a crown made of woven twigs. He encourages her to enter the Selection, for his sake, so that he will know that he hadn’t kept her back from a better life.Īmerica decides that there is a minor chance of her getting picked, so she might as well go through the motions in order to appease Aspen and her parents. Aspen asks her if she wants to enter the Selection, and when she emphatically denies wanting to do so, he presses her about what life as a Six would mean. As Aspen eats her dinner, she tries to convince him not to take on another job, as he works hard enough as it is, and “it wasn’t anything new for a Six, Seven or Eight to just die of exhaustion” (18).
She hides this relationship from her family because Aspen is a Six: “servants and only a step up from Sevens in that they were better educated and trained for indoor work” (15). America loves Aspen: her “great ambition” is “not to be Illéa’s princess,” but Aspen’s (15). That night at midnight, she takes the food and sneaks out to meet with her secret love, Aspen, in the family’s treehouse. The contest is to be broadcasted on television, and America can't imagine anything as humiliating as watching as “this stuck-up little wimp picked the most gorgeous and shallow one of the bunch to be the silent, pretty face that stood beside him on TV” (7).Īt dinner, America fights with her mother and does not eat her food. A number of women who volunteer per province will be chosen at random and sent to the palace to meet the prince, and their families will be paid a large sum of money for their daughter’s participation in the selection. In order to celebrate the coming of age of the prince, the kingdom calls upon thirty-five girls to go to the palace and present themselves for marriage to him. The letter was sent to every single woman between the ages of sixteen and twenty. Employment depends on national holidays, where their art is purchased as gifts by patrons. Living in this caste means her family isn't destitute, but their money is tight. America’s family exists in the fifth caste, which is made up of “artists and classical musicians” (3). In the country of Illéa, there are eight castes that designate subjects’ place in society. America doesn't want to sacrifice the things that she loves about her life. Her mother sees the letter as the solution to all of the family’s problems, but America considers it to be “something close to death” to participate in the competition (2). Recycling.When America Singer receives her letter summoning her to something called the Selection in the mail, she fights with her mother over whether she should go. When someone else remembers some great story about me/us that I’ve forgotten. Not walking up but looking at a beautiful staircase. Spending an hour typing at a coffee shop. That my wedding dress was tea length, not floor. But she made a decision – and only waffled a little tiny bit! Yay for America!! In the end, the romantic side of this story still had just enough angst to keep it interesting, but not enough that I wanted to strangle the characters involved.īeing married. Could she have expressed that decision to both guys a bit earlier in the book? Well, yes.
Let me start by saying that America did not magically turn into the strong and decisive character I really wanted her to be (see negatives below), but I was happy that she didn’t spend this entire book wondering if she should be with Aspen or Maxon ( thank you!!). But some unexpected things happened with the rebels, and we got to know them a bit more as well – I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will just say that the rebellion storyline started to get really interesting to me and I wasn’t ever sure how it was all going to end up! Honestly, often rebellion storylines bore me a bit, but this one didn’t at all – I was very invested in what was going to happen and how it would all play out. The rebels were still repeatedly attacking the palace and, as the book went on, they started to even attack the general population.
The rebellion was still in full swing when this book began. I think it made a huge difference to the story to truly see these girls and get to know them! We even got to see why each of them wanted to marry Maxon. We got to know who they really are and why they’d made the choices they made. We got to know all of the girls in the Elite A LOT better in this book.