Me on Divergent

Title: Divergent
Author: Veronica Roth
Release Date: May 3, 2011
Publisher: Katherine Tegen (HarperCollins imprint)

Divergent feels like the 86th dystopian YA book I've read in the past year & a half (it's actually the 12th) and I feel like I'm starting to get tired of it, like I need to circle back around to contemporary or paranormal, or try middle grade books for a little while. That being said, this was still a really good book. I also think it wasn't a good idea to read this and Blood Red Road in the same day. Too much bleak.

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five different factions: Amity (the peaceful), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave), Abnegation (the selfless), and Erudite (the intelligent). On a certain day, all sixteen-year-olds must decide which faction they will devote the rest of their lives to. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is. The choice she makes surprises everyone, including herself. And so starts the highly competitive initiation process where she renames herself Tris.

But, she also has a secret, one she has to keep hidden because it could mean death.

I don't want to be boring and say how the idea for this segmented dystopian society is really interesting, but it is. You can see bits of it in society now, the sections and jobs that certain types of people always take.

Tris is rather interesting as well. She doesn't completely back down, even when she's beaten and bruised and sore, even when she tired and scared and alone.

There's a trend I've been noticing in YA novels on the inner strength of characters, their immense courage and perseverance, they way they somehow fight back against whatever's beating them down. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. It's just something I've been noticing, how characters get dragged down into the deepest, darkest pit and find a way to claw back up the side.

A unique and daring debut from a young author, Veronica Roth's Divergent will leave you gasping through the book's fast pace, the complex characters, and the hidden truths we find in ourselves in what looks to be our darkest hours.