The Halloween party finally arrives and proves that Maxon learned nothing from reading his ancestor’s diary.  Everything is lavish and decked out in gold and hideously expensive and seriously if there’s not an uprising because of this I will be even more disappointed than I already am.

We get a rundown of everyone’s costumes.  The girls are all done up, but the guards and guests…seem more like they’re dressed for a frat party.  One guard even cross-dressed.  Look, book, there’s “Halloween” and then there’s “Halloween in front of dignitaries and diplomats.”  I don’t know why I expect you to know the difference, though.  *sigh*

America is a butterfly.

Aspen shows up, and he’s not in costume.

It seemed sad to waste a perfectly good reason to be extravagant.

There’s a strange disconnect in books, and I’ve noticed this quite a lot recently, between the idea of having pretty things and obtaining pretty things.  These books are perfectly happy to carry on and on about extravagant luxuries without giving a second thought to the work necessary to obtain them.  Here, America acts as if all this stuff was just lying around, and if it doesn’t get used it’ll go to waste, so might as well have fun.  But, no, this stuff was created for the party, and it tied up money, manpower, and time that could have been used for other things.  You do not just need “an excuse” to throw golden parties, you need the gold.

And America, who has lived her life in poverty (or so she claims) gives no thought to any of this.  She doesn’t think of how much food for starving Eights could be bought with all that gold, nor does she stop to wonder how hard the maids and other staff had to work for all of this.  She acts like it just fell out of the sky.

There are occasions when this is okay.  If you really do have a lot of gold and time, fine, throw a party.  When people are starving and there’s a war going on, that’s not the time.  And if you do it anyway, don’t have a heroine who smiles and goes along with it and then expect us to still respect her. 

And then Aspen wanders off again to his guard friends.

I wondered if being a guard gave him a sense of family the way the Selection had done for me.

…what?  You have one friend and then either hate or ignore everyone else.  And also, you have an actual family and so does Aspen.

The royal family shows up.

The king was apparently dressed as a king, simply that of another country.

Oh for fuck’s sake.

No wonder they’re always at war.

This is what we call “a grave insult” to the king of said other country.  This is Clarkson thumbing his nose at the other guy and saying “look, I could totally be you.”  That’s only funny when you’re not in command of an army and living in a world where takeovers are common.

And Maxon is a pirate.  *sigh*

America sits and watching the king and queen, telling us all about their compatible personalities because lord knows she couldn’t show that to us.  Nope.  That would take time away from pretty dresses and boy troubles.

Though the [Selection] should be archaic and wrong, it worked.

…what? 

It worked that one time, so that makes the whole system fair?  And I’m not really sure where she gets her “should be wrong” from, because all the issues that are actually wrong with it aren’t the issues she brings up.  The issues she whines about aren’t even actual issues.  They’re just nonsense about how you can’t find love this way.

America angsts some about why Maxon is ignoring her (even though he’s not) and then thinks about Aspen some and my god is this a boring party.  It’s just America standing in one spot this whole time and watching people.  Finally she goes off to dance with Marlee’s guard friend. Woodwork says she’s the prince’s favorite, and she’s all like “oh, but is it really true!?!?”

Brat, shut up.  He’s straight-up told you as much.  Why are you confused about this?  Because he’s still dating the other girls?  Well, what did you expect, for him to just ignore them and dote on you, even though that’s incredibly rude and also he has to pick a wife if you get cold feet?  There’s lots of drama possibilities here, but failing to understand when someone explicitly says “I like you the best” is a very poor choice.

Then she gets jealous that Celeste is flirting with Aspen, so she goes over to dance with him and whine about her boy troubles and how she’s just so sure that Maxon doesn’t like her anymore and woe! They have mindless chit-chat that’s supposed to be romantic and omg I’m just so fucking bored.  I would put up with romance shenanigans if only something new would happen.  Instead it’s just the same shit over and over and over with nothing to distract me or make it more palatable.

Then Maxon comes over to render all her angst moot by saying that he’s dispensed with his obligations to the other girls and can spend the rest of the night dancing with her.  Oh, wow, I’m just so fucking shocked by this development.  Aren’t you shocked that he’s acting exactly the way he said he would?  Shocking!

She says she thought he was kicking her out, and he repeats the fact that she’s his favorite, because apparently she has the memory of a fucking goldfish.

“Soon, when it’s proper for me to end the Selection, when I propose to you

Why is it not proper to end it now?  People are already pushing him to hurry up and chose, so why the sudden insistence that he has to wait?

More mindless chatter about how awesome everything is. 

I couldn’t imagine anything strong enough to take that happiness away.

With your track record, a chapter break it strong enough to make you forget all of this.