Book Review: The One

The One

by  Kiera Cass
Date Read: 6/19/14
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

That was surprisingly good.  Looking back on my reviews of the first two books, I gave The Selection 3 stars, and The Elite 3 stars (on the verge of 2.5 stars).  The first book started off slow – not much happened, dialogue wasn’t very good, her “I’m not pretty” attitude annoyed me. But once she got to the palace things picked up.  But I was very confused at the end when the rebel attack was thrown in there. It seemed so out of place.  But I enjoyed it enough (I liked Maxon a lot), that I decided to read the second one.  But that was almost worse.  I think it suffered from middle-book syndrome.  America was very indecisive in that book and it bugged the crap out of me!  But I think Maxon was written really well.  The ending was really abrupt and not a lot of questions about the rebels were answered in that book.

So let's first start with talking about that beautiful cover. I've liked all The Selection novel covers, but this is my favorite. I love the white dress - I love the roses on the bottom half. I love the reflection in the glass. I even love her hair and pose. It's just a beautiful cover. I wish I could wear that dress!

On the review of the book: Cass did a great job closing out the series.  I fell like this book really redeemed the series. I still probably would have enjoyed it just because Maxon was written so well.  But this book actually answered a lot of open questions and had a pretty good ending.

So this book actually starts off right where the other book left off – and that first scene of her trying to seduce Maxon was hilarious. I loved Maxon’s reaction. It was a great start to the book. I absolutely loved that there was no love triangle in this!  She had made up her mind in the last book who she wanted to be with.  Now, that doesn’t mean there was drama because Maxon did not know that Aspen is the guy she had been in love with before…so obviously you knew that was going to blow up at some point. But we weren’t constantly questioning who she was in love with. That was refreshing.

The questions regarding the rebels were answered. Though I feel like she could have dug deeper in to this and explained more, I still had enough of my surface questions answered and that was fine with me.

I liked the new characters that were added in this book, and there was more action in this book!  Or at least America was involved in more of the action, so we saw what was going on – she wasn’t locked in a safe room the entire time.

The one thing that makes me drop a star off this book is the fact that neither Maxon or America wanted to tell each other they loved them first. It was always “I don’t want to say it first”, “No he needs to say it first”, “Nope, I’m not saying it first”!  Good grief! Just say it already!  You’re both feeling it, you both are pretty sure about how the other feels, JUST SAY IT.  It was fine about the first two or three times, but towards the end of the book it really just started irritating me because then it would spur fights. Ugh. If she had just taken this out of the book, I probably would have given it 4.5 stars.

Maxon and America’s relationship is what I absolutely loved about this book though. Well, mostly I love Maxon. But their relationship actually seemed real to me.  They both had tempers though, so they fought a lot, but I loved how they would learn from each other and always work past it.  Maxon was so romantic in this book, I just swooned!  I know. A lot of it was pretty cheesy, but I don’t care. I’m pregnant and the cheese is welcomed! Every girl wants a guy to gush over her like that. Fight for her like that. Protect her like that. [swoon]

The ending actually caught me off guard!  I had seen someone post some quotes from the  book and I totally thought something different was going to happen than did! [SPOILER: I thought that Aspen was going to be the one who was shot and I expected he would die.  But when it was Maxon who jumped in front of America to take the bullet, and he laid there dying saying those things to her, I started crying! That was not how it was supposed to end! I had hope he wouldn’t actually die though since she was so convinced that he WAS dead.  But Aspen made it through too – which surprised me. I was happy with the ending for Aspen and Lucy.  I was shocked when Celeste was shot in the head (I just started to like her!). I was expecting the King to be killed but not the queen. I was surprised how late the fight about Aspen happened – but in honesty, it was actually the perfect place to happen. He almost made the wrong decision because of that fight but having him almost lose her and she him in the attack was the perfect way for it to end. END SPOILER]

A lot of people actually ended up dying in this book. While you don’t see much of it happen, it’s all told to you at the end or in the epilogue. The epilogue was even done well. I liked that it switched to present tense.

I wish we had gotten more.  I was thoroughly sucked in to this book and I still want more. I mostly want more of Maxon, and Maxon and America together. Cass did a great job ending her series, and I think she really saved it with this one. If you’ve enjoyed The Selection enough, I recommend that you finish the series. Once you get through it, I don’t think you’ll regret it. I know I didn’t.