The Heir – The New Competition Begins

I took a break from reading this series which turned out to be longer than expected as this novel takes place at least two decades after the first three books. A lot has happened since America Singer won the last Selection, Maxon became king and took her as his queen.

The castes have been dissolved as I expected but life hasn’t been easy ever since.

Another thing that has happened during Maxon and America’s reign is that they have abolished the law that the heir to the throne can only be male. Now the eldest child can inherit regardless of gender (thank Primus!). Their eldest daughter Princess Eadlyn is now set to be the next queen of Illea and she is eager to take it and spends a lot of time working with King Maxon on her duties and responsibilities. Queen America has not changed, she and Maxon are still happily in love and have also given Eadlyn three brothers whom she loves very much.

Several other returning characters are also present: Aspen Leger and Lucy have been together for a while. Marlee and her husband live in the palace with their children. America’s younger sister May is thriving independently, so yeah it’s good to see everyone again.

Eadlyn is fiercely independent (sounds familiar?) and her parents are worried that she may not be able to handle the duties as a ruler alone so they strongly encourage her to marry and eventually decide she should have a Selection of her own. The princess protested but at first, I never understood why. She claims later that she feels she has built a wall around herself.

Nevertheless, she reluctantly agrees and the competitors come in. To her surprise, one of them is her childhood friend, Kile, I’m not sure how he was chosen to participate but he wasn’t so enthusiastic about being picked. Eadlyn eventually stages a kiss with him to get the people talking about something positive when they don’t seem to be handling the recent changes very well. Even without the castes, many people still struggle to find work.

I wanted to believe if Eadlyn were to eventually choose, Kile would be the most typical choice and things between them now seem complicated, they sure as hell seem to enjoy making out! But as the book went on, I was uncertain which of the boys to root for. I liked Ean’s charisma but when he offered the princess something to please her family, to me it seemed too good to be true but the drawback was she would be in something loveless.

Hale seemed nice, and so did Baden until he complained when he couldn’t get what he wanted. There was even a guy named Raoul who gave me Phantom of the Opera vibes! Good riddance to Jack and Burke, and Fox was also quite pleasant. One guy who was super sweet was Henri, his first language was Finnish but he and Eadlyn found a way to communicate and I loved the chapter where they got close, but what I couldn’t help but notice was she was becoming closer to Erik, who served as Henri’s translator. I continue to remain torn over which guy to root for. Even if Erik isn’t even part of the competition, he still seems to be, in a way, in the pile if you know what I mean.

I feel like Eadlyn eventually becomes fond of these men but still doesn’t know what to do with herself. It seems she begins to see finding love in a new light after her brother abruptly leaves her and her mother’s life is on the line so we’ll see where this goes in the final volume of this series.

I really want to read more of Kiera’s work, she seems to be very overlooked.