Divergent by Veronica Roth

Age Group: YA

Genre: Dystopian

Pub Date: February 2012

Publisher: Harper Collins

                                                                            

I totally get the hype! However, I feel like it didn’t quite live up to everything I’ve seen about it. Don’t get me wrong, Divergent was a fantastic book, dull of everything I could have wanted from a dystopian novel: action, drama, and romance, and I really enjoyed it. My Youtube video explains why I didn’t feel it meet my expectations.

Divergent is about Tris, who lives in a world where everyone is divided into “fractions” based on their personality. Instead of choosing the selfless faction she was born into, Abnegation, Tris choses Dauntless, the brave nation. I really liked Roth’s world, I thought it was really clever, and thought-out, and I haven’t seen one like it. I would have liked more explanation about how the system came into place, but maybe that will happen in the sequels. 

The plot, pacing, and writing were amazing. It became addictive: I wanted to read on and on. There was never a dull moment in this book, as something was always happening. As much as the world was unique, I feel that the story wasn’t, but while I was reading it, I frankly didn’t care because I was having so much fun and there was enough twists to keep it unpredictable. The other reason why I didn’t care too much about the plot was because I felt the whole thing was about Tris and her discovery of herself.

Tris was a great female character. I often find dystopian books lose their sense of humour with the doom and gloom, but Tris was pretty funny. And good, and kind, and most importantly, flawed. I felt all of her actions were really true to her character; she was brave, yet not excessively heroic. Most importantly, despite living eons into the future, she was really relatable. She’s just a teenager struggling to find out who she is and where she belongs.

As for the romance? Well Four, Four, Four… It was impossible not to like Four. He’s got that whole bad-boy-with-a-heart-of-gold thing down. He also had great character development and loads of twists in his background. However, as much as I liked Four and Tris, I feel like there could have been some more background or development in the other characters. I would have loved to find out more about Tris’ family, or Christine, or even Eric. Roth created amazing characters, but left me hanging.

I think it’s the lack of connection I had with the other characters which gave me the emotional disconnection with most of the plot that wasn’t directly to do with Tris and Four. And this was the major flaw for me. The only emotion I felt during the whole book was “I’M SO EXCITED WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT”, while other dystopians have provided me with so much more.

Sum It Up: A must-read for dystopian lovers. I really loved the book, thought it was different and action-packed, but didn’t quite live up to the hype for me.

Rating: 8/10