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
