Book Review: Divergent (Divergent #1) by Veronica Roth (a dusty review that has been sitting in limbo for a while)

I'm a little late to the Divergent club. I've heard so much good hype about it from the general public and have watched it pop up on other reviewers' sites, but for some reason I have continued to put off reading it for this long. Because the movie is set to come out at the beginning of 2014, and I know I'll end up seeing it at some point, I figured I should probably read the book(s) first.

(Blurb): In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are—and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

What I liked:

I'll start by saying that I loved book 1! It had just the right amount of set-up to get the story going, but it didn't feel like it dragged like some do as you wait for the conflict to ramp up. I found the idea of factions very interesting. What would it be like if society was organized by personality? Would that make civilizations any less violent? These are questions that I have thought about before - though not seriously because the obvious downfalls of this are addressed in the book -  and author Veronica Roth does a great job setting up these questions in our mind as we're reading.



The character progression was well thought out too. I loved watching Beatrice (a.k.a. Tris) go from someone who felt confined in life (almost to the point of imprisonment) to someone who was able to break the mold  and really give herself a shot at living a happy life. This is especially true when she meets her training instructor, 'Four'.

What I didn't like:

Tris was a little to "just go with it". It seemed like she always had the answer to whatever it was, and that answer was always right. Thus, by the end of the book she was just throwing herself in these dangerous situations, yet there was no real anxiety for the reader because you could easily predict how every character would act and how situations would play out.

Overall:
The book was entertaining and had a great plot that hooked me right from the start. I knew from just a few pages in that I would want to continue on with the series.

Update:

I read this book and wrote the review in February 2014. My original plan was to wait and write a review on the series as a whole. I finished book 2, Insurgent, and got about half way through book 3, Allegiant by the end of February. Unfortunately I ran out of steam while reading Allegiant. I succumbed to the same plot frustrations that others have mentioned in reviews and I lost interest in continuing. I try not to read too many reviews before starting a book for this very reason. I don't want to be swayed before reading - I just want my interest peaked. I thought that I was going into the series fairly unbiased, but it's hard to say if my loss of interest was my feelings alone or an increased awareness of what others thought. Perhaps it wouldn't have bothered me so much if I didn't know anything about the uproar from fans. But let's be real, in the book world it's hard not to hear about certain things.

I hate to leave a series hanging regardless of my preconceived thoughts. I do plan on finishing Allegiant before the last movie is released because I have to read a book before watching the movie. I think the movies are/will be great regardless. That at least gives me another year-plus to push through...haha. 

My goal is to finish the series before the end of this year, and I sincerely hope that my thoughts have changed and that I enjoy it. I think the first two book in the series were pretty phenomenal and I'd hate to have that thought so severely changed by the plot of the last book. I hope that this 9 month break gives me a different view going back into Allegiant.