The Jewel by Amy Ewing

Genre: Young Adult
Style: Unique and Dystopian 
Recommended: 16+
Other: First in a series

If your loved The Selection series you will love this series. Although they have completely opposite plots they are similar in style and writing. This book is set in a dystopian word where the rich and elite who live in the jewel cannot conceive and carry their own children so have to use surrogates taken from the marsh. This story focuses on Violet and her live as a surrogate and how she begins to fall in love even though she is forbidden. Some people may say this is is a very strange book but I love how different and unique it is from any other book I've read. I cannot recommend this book enough and do not be put off by the slightly strange plot because this is a truly amazing and unique book. 

Blurb:
The Jewel means wealth. The Jewel means beauty. The Jewel means royalty. But for girls like Violet, the Jewel means servitude. Not just any kind of servitude. Violet, born and raised in the Marsh, has been trained as a surrogate for the royalty—because in the Jewel the only thing more important than opulence is offspring.
Purchased at the surrogacy auction by the Duchess of the Lake and greeted with a slap to the face, Violet (now known only as #197) quickly learns of the brutal truths that lie beneath the Jewel’s glittering facade: the cruelty, backstabbing, and hidden violence that have become the royal way of life.
Violet must accept the ugly realities of her existence... and try to stay alive. But then a forbidden romance erupts between Violet and a handsome gentleman hired as a companion to the Duchess’s petulant niece. Though his presence makes life in the Jewel a bit brighter, the consequences of their illicit relationship will cost them both more than they bargained for.

Other books in The Lone City series:
The Jewel (#1)
The House of the Stone (#1.5)
The White Rose (#2)