Divergent - Veronica Roth

Divergent by Veronica Roth

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

GENRE: Dystopia
FORM: Audiobook
SERIES: Divergent – Book 1
NARRATOR: Emma Galvin

SYNOPSIS: Chicago has been divided into factions; Candor (honest), Abnegation (selfless), Dauntless (brave), Amity (peace), and Erudite (intelligent). The groups live together in a somewhat peaceful dissension, but recently the pot has been stirring and ideas of rebellion have been forming. Once a year the sixteen year old members of every faction is able to make a decision as to which faction they feel they would most happily and effectively fit in to. They each go through an assessment test that evaluates their reactions to certain situations and “places” them within a faction, but it is merely a suggestion. No matter what the test shows, the teenager has the freedom and power to decide which faction to follow.

Beatrice Prior has just completed her assessment, and has found out that she is divergent, which means she does not fall into one faction, but many, and for some reason this is very dangerous. She decides that despite the fact that she will miss her parents, she is not selfless enough to remain in Abnegation any longer, and decides on Dauntless. What she doesn’t realize is, though she choose Dauntless as her faction, Dauntless also much choose her as a member.

REVIEW: What a great book. Beatrice (Tris) is everything I love in a female character; a strong yet growing person who has the ability to kick butt, lead a group, and make awesome decision which might save the world! Okay, that was a little exaggerated, but I do love strong girls who kick butt! It always makes for a fun book!

Veronica Roth has created a great set of characters, and I felt like they were the best part of the book. Divergent seemed start off at a pretty slow pace (but not really annoyingly or even boringly) I assumed it was to leave room for the story to expand through the next two books of the series, but then the ending was a fast frenzy of action-packed craziness. One thing I do have to say, there was no super crazy cliff-hanger ending…I was really, REALLY expecting the cliffhanger. For instance, I was thinking that, while the meeting was inevitable, I didn’t think there would be a Tris/Tobias reunion until the next book at the very least. I am excited to find out what happens next in this series.

WHAT I LOVED: The training for Dauntless. I don’t really know why, but I loved it. Also, Veronica Roth’s ability to do the gross and shocking (knife/eye) because it was necessary for the book – she wasn’t all nice about it!

NOT SO MUCH: I sort of felt like were a few story-line issues. Such as how Tris’ mother was telling her to start out behind in the training, and then end up in the middle. What happened to that advice? It was like Tris never thought about it again. And then the entire scene where the reason a past divergent recruit was discovered was because he did too well and attracted a bunch of attention; but here is Tris, in the final stage, blowing everything out of the water because of her divergence – I was expecting very harsh repercussions, because I’m thinking she’s being too bold and not careful enough. I felt like she didn’t take the cautioning seriously enough, but then it came to nothing.

SONG DEDICATION: Muse is the absolute BEST dystopia-genre band. Try out “Uprising,” and tell me it’s not perfect!!

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