Review: The Betrothed

The Betrothed

By: Kiera Cass

My Rating: 2/5 Stars

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Genre: Romance

Page Count: 400

Synopsis: When King Jameson declares his love for Lady Hollis Brite, Hollis is shocked—and thrilled. After all, she’s grown up at Keresken Castle, vying for the king’s attention alongside other daughters of the nobility. Capturing his heart is a dream come true.

But Hollis soon realizes that falling in love with a king and being crowned queen may not be the happily ever after she thought it would be. And when she meets a commoner with the mysterious power to see right into her heart, she finds that the future she really wants is one that she never thought to imagine.

This post is spoiler free.

I think I should start this review by saying that I loved The Selection, I really did. I saw that Kiera Cass was coming out with a new book and the cover reminded me so much of the election and I thought, man I need to read this! It’ll be my new guilty pleasure read. Oh how wrong I was. This book was a big disappointment, both in plot and characters. I don’t give out low ratings lightly, and I really had to think about this one. But, I think in the end two stars is more fair than 1 because the book did have some good elements to it as well.

The story started out alight, I liked Hollis, she was definitely an America carbon copy, but she had spunk and I liked her. There was a brief moment in the beginning where I thought, ok this is highly predictable and cliche, but you know what I’m ok with that. Then it all fell apart. The plot took some incredible weird turns without any build up, the last few chapters of the book went entirely off the rails, and the characters made some truly bizarre turn that just weren’t support by any foreshadowing or character growth.

I just think if you going to have a grand amazing gesture of forbidden love, then maybe have the two characters spend more than 3 moments together first! Also, if we’re going to have betrayal, I want to see some basis for that in a character’s development, it’s ok to have something be a surprise, but once you know and look back you should be able to pick out the signs in the rest of the book. I get that she was trying to make this book maybe less predictable than The Selection, but honestly it just didn’t work.

I decided on the 2 stars because I did enjoy the first 5ish chapters of the book. Was it basically just the second Selection book with some small changes? yes, but I was ok with that. I would say don’t read this book. It will just make you feel disappointed, and honestly I find myself less enthusiastic about The Selection now.

Have you read this book? let me know your thoughts down in the comments!