Book: Divergent by Veronica Roth

Book Info: Published by Katherine Tegen Books; 487 pages; hardcover; from the library

Goodreads Summary: In a future Chicago, 16-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomaly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.

Oh.  My.  God.  This was such a hard book to put down.  I certainly get the buzz surrounding this book.  I really liked it, and it was well-paced.  It also had a lot of action, and I couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

I thought the idea of people focusing on one thing, like courage or intelligence or selflessness was really interesting.  I thought Roth did a great job at showing how focusing on one thing above all others can go very wrong.  You really get a sense that picking sides can be really good, really bad, or somewhere in between, and the problems that can arise when people are so focused on something that they lose sight of everything else.

I thought Tris was interesting, but I had a love-hate relationship with her.  I liked that she struggled with the faction she wanted to go with, and that she felt happy with her decision.  But she went from underdog to kick-ass heroine way too fast for me, and that didn’t feel real to me.  There were a few deaths in the book, and I just didn’t care.  It was hard to connect with a lot of characters, because I felt like I didn’t get to know any of them.

I so want to learn more about the different factions, and how they came to be.  It seems interesting, and I want to know more about them!  And the factionless!  I want to know more about them too.  I can’t wait until Insurgent comes out, because I’d really like to know where things are headed and what will happen next!

I give it a 4 out of 5!  It went by really fast, and I hope to see the characters grow more in the next book.