Book Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Divergent by Veronica Roth
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: May 2011
ISBN: 9780062024022
Source: ARC sent by publishers

 

Beatrice has spent her life in the Abnegation faction, where selflessness is the most prized attribute.  But, when she turns sixteen and gets to choose whether to stay with her family in Abnegation or go somewhere else, she decides to leave it behind, along with all the feelings of inadequacy for not being selfless enough.  Choosing Dauntless, however, ends up being a lot more difficult than she originally thought, as she must fight for her life every day.  Danger is lurking around every corner, and not just because of the deadly secret she's keeping.  She will have to face many threats from inside Dauntless and from outside it as well.

Things I Liked:
This was a fantastic story that sucked me in right from the beginning.  It definitely has the appeal that Hunger Games has, with the action-packed fast-paced story that has you flipping pages as fast as your fingers will allow and reading late into the night because you simply can't put it down.  I flew through this one, devouring the dystopian goodness and loving Beatrice/Tris for her conflicted feelings and her unique personality among the many around her.  She was most definitely not the perfect main character, but made bad choices and good, as well as struggled with issues many of us faced as teens and continue to face today.  Every page is stuffed with details of this interesting future world, not to mention all kinds of fighting for life and struggling to survive.  It's definitely another of my favorite dystopians of the year. 

Things I Didn't Like:
I did start to think it might be just a little bit over-the-top in its non-stop action.  I mean, pretty much every bad thing that could happen does.  But, most of the time, I was glued to the pages, unable to pry my eyeballs from the story, so this is a very minor quibble.  

Read-alikes:
Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

BOOK CONTENT RATINGS:
s-factor: !
a few here and there

mrg-factor: X
some implied, nothing explicit

v-factor: ->->->
quite a bit, some disturbing

Overall rating: *****

Any other new dystopians that you've enjoyed recently?

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