Review Detail

Set twenty years after the original Selection trilogy, The Heir is the story of King Maxon and Queen America’s daughter Eadlyn. The princess has grown up knowing the fairy tale of her parents’ relationship but she doesn’t see that for herself. She’s always had a plan for her rule and a Selection was never in the plans. Until it is.

The Selection series has been one that I found got better as it went along. The writing and the characters were noticeably different from the first book to the third, and now with this new addition and the twist of it being a female-led Selection process, there was so much to enjoy. It was still an easy read, like the others in the series, but Eadlyn was such a different character from either of her parents and I felt a better sense of who the guys were as characters earlier on than I had with the girls from The Selection.

I liked Eadlyn as a character. She could come off as spoiled, maybe a little bratty at times, but I could see her point in a lot of ways. If she was going to be forced to hold a Selection, she needed guys involved who would respect her and if they couldn’t handle her being harsh, no way would they handle being a prince. It was interesting to see her slowly come around to liking some of the guys instead of working against the whole process and learn more about what it was going to take of her to one day run the country.

It didn’t take long to get a few favourites for the guys. A lot were mostly jut background, like a bunch of the girls from The Selection, but the ones who stood out all stood out due to their personalities. Some were cute and funny, or shy but sweet, or overconfident and aggressive. There were a few tense moments between the princess and some of the guys.

The dynamic between Eadlyn and her family was great. It was obvious how much they all cared for each other but there was a difference between Eadlyn and her siblings. She would be queen one day and they were free to fall in love with whomever they wanted. She had training and stress and they had more freedom.

I also really liked seeing that there were still problems with the Castes going on even 20 years later. Dissolving them and trying to create an equal system was never going to happen overnight but getting everyone to believe in it could take generations. The pacing of this book also seemed faster than The Selection, which would make sense since I believe Eadlyn’s story is a duology so there’s one less book to tell the story. It wasn’t too fast of pacing, just faster.

Overall, I enjoyed the twist to the Selection process and the wait for the last book will be too long.