Review | The Heir by Kiera Cass

The Heir by Kiera Cass
Series: The Selection #4
Published By: Harper Teen
Published On: May 5, 2015
Genre: Dystopian
Pages: 342
Format: Paperback
Source: Bought
Rating: ★★★★

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Princess Eadlyn has grown up hearing endless stories about how her mother and father met. Twenty years ago, America Singer entered the Selection and won the heart of Prince Maxon—and they lived happily ever after. Eadlyn has always found their fairy-tale story romantic, but she has no interest in trying to repeat it. If it were up to her, she'd put off marriage for as long as possible. 
But a princess's life is never entirely her own, and Eadlyn can't escape her very own Selection—no matter how fervently she protests. 
Eadlyn doesn't expect her story to end in romance. But as the competition begins, one entry may just capture Eadlyn's heart, showing her all the possibilities that lie in front of her . . . and proving that finding her own happily ever after isn't as impossible as she's always thought.

Following on from the initial Selection trilogy, The Heir follows Prince Maxon’s daughter as she goes through her Selection. As this is a continuation of The Selection series, of which I have reviews of The Selection, The Elite and The One, there is very little else I can give away about this book.

I absolutely loved the first three books in The Selection series so I was very excited to get to this one. Unfortunately, I hated Eadlyn. She was such an infuriating character who did nothing but act like a spoilt brat. Considering how much I loved both Maxon and America, I was quite disappointed that I hated their daughter so much. She did improve slightly throughout the book but not enough for me to change my opinion.

Something I did like, though, was the change of seeing the Selection process from the other side. As interesting as it was to see the Selection process from the point of view of a member of the Selected, in this book you get to experience the process from the point of view of the Princess as she chooses. It was definitely a different reading experience and I found it very interesting.

It took me a while to get my head around Maxon and America as adults. It was very strange to me to read about them as grown adults with children, especially as I had only finished the original series, in which they were still children themselves, just two months earlier. I did eventually enjoy reading about them as adults and seeing how their life progressed after the end of their Selection.

I liked all of the Selected boys. Well, I liked the ones that we got to know a bit about. I found that a lot of the boys were overlooked, which is understandable considering the amount of boys originally Selected. However, the ones that were introduced I really liked. I have my favourites, as I’m sure most do, but they were all interesting characters.

There was a lot of emphasis on the state of the society in the original trilogy so I found it interesting to see how the society has developed in the years since The One. I can’t give too much away without spoiling the previous books but I thought that changes, and the unexpected troubles that arose from the changes, were interesting to read about. I am intrigued to see what will happen as the series continues.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and returning to this world and the characters I had previously enjoyed reading about. However, my dislike of Eadlyn did make it a little less enjoyable. While I did enjoy it, had this not been a continuation of one of my favourite series but a separate new series, I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much as I did.