This review originally posted at More Than Just Magic 
 I admit that going into The Jewel I had my doubts. It was described as The Selection meets The Handmaid's Tale. One of those books is one of my favourite novels of all time and one of them is a series that I abandoned halfway through. One of those books is an interesting commentary on sexism and body politics. The other is a dystopian-esque version of The Bachelor. My fear was that The Jewel would be closer to the latter. But I decided to give it a shot just in case. 
 Ultimately, however I should have listened to my original doubts. Though The Jewel does share some similarities with The Handmaid's Tale, it's mainly the forced surrogacy and the dystopian society. It doesn't share one of the most important elements--the social and political commentary on our current society. Instead it has more in common with the sea of Young Adult dystopian novels we've seen in the wake of The Hunger Games and Divergent. It has a great premise but it's execution is shaky. 
 The basic premise is that almost all women are unable to conceive, so the girls that can are shuttled off to covenant-like houses, until it's time for them to go to The Auction. The Auction is exactly what it sounds like, rich women bid over which girl they want to carry their child. I think I can pinpoint this part of the novel as the point where my scepticism began. The Auction is when the reader is told just how special, Violet, the protagonist, is. Out of the hundred girls being auctioned she's in the top five. Everyone wants her. There's even a bidding war over her. 
 All of which would be fine, except that as the novel progresses there's very little evidence that supports her ranking. She admits to being quite clumsy and that she was never very good at remembering the wealthy households that run their society. All of which make her more relatable to a reader, I suppose, but don't support her high rank. Her rank seems entirely based upon her ability to play the cello and her aptitude for something called the Auguries. 
 The Auguries are a set of magical abilities that only the surrogates have. There are three of them, one allows the user to change the colour of something, one allows you to change the size and one allow you to change the shape. I'm willing to accept the convenience that the only girls who can have children also have the magical ability to tailor-make those children. However, when Violet is informed that's what she expected to do with the Auguries, it comes as a total surprise. Surely that would have been part of their training in the covenants? How else could they guarantee that they would disfigure or harm the babies? 
 I will say that Ewing did an excellent job describing the physical world around Violet. Her new life in The Jewel easily sprung to life in my mind and I would have liked to explore that world a bit further. I can't say for sure whether that's enough to make me continue with this series. There is definitely some interesting directions it could go in, but based on what's happened so far, I'm not sure that it will.