Divergent

A girl in a world where the population is divided into five groups, the kind, the selfless, the brave, the wise, and the honest. For some reason, you may only belong to one faction and each faction believes their way is the right way (welcome to political statements, religious values, and basically any controversial topic in the modern world.) This girl, Beatrice, chooses the exact opposite faction from her own and is thrust into an environment where she must go against her own nature to fit in, or become a nobody, factionless.

What I Liked: 

Tobias and Tris. I think they are so sweet together and I just… argh I can’t even! 

The action was all beautifully written. I could see it all clearly, but it wasn’t so broken down that it lost the flow and looked like it was going through freezeframe—which kind of tends to happen in YA action scenes. Some of these sequences actually made my heart pound.

Thank God some YA author grows the balls to use the “s” word! I hate it when YA authors beat around the bush and call it something else or don’t say anything at all, just have their characters blush madly (kind of like how I’m doing right now.) I’ll say it nice and loud…

SEX!!!

Although… It kind of felt like…

The way it ends. Very well written and super intense… Not to mention super sweet!

The many sides of Tobias and Tris. They, as well as Tris’ mother and Jeanine were the only truly believable characters because their natures were complex. Everyone else fit into the mold of their faction, whereas the characters listed above were not afraid to reach outside the box and really think critically and differently (SPOILERRRRR!!!!) And I suppose that’s part of the whole Divergence thing with the three former in the list.

The conflict. Not horribly new, the conflict was of someone doing bad things with good intentions in mind. She didn’t want genocide (at least the good in me is trying to believe she doesn’t and I don’t believe she wanted that ultimately (hopefully you guys know who I am talking about)) she wanted a more equal government.

What I Didn’t Like: 

The climax came very suddenly. Like, there was calm, and then all of the sudden there is THE rising action, the one that made me go, whoa something big is going to happen! Maybe the abruptness was the point, but I am not a fan since the rest of the novel was paced so well and then it feels like she didn’t know what else to write between what had happened before and the rising action to the climax.

The characters were a bit too cliche. The Abnegation were incapable of being selfish, the Candor can absolutely never lie, and the Dauntless are always daredeviling/being brutes, and amity people are incapable of being mean. Then from that Peter never varied in his character. He was always Draco Malfoy and his friends were always Pansy Parkinson and Blaze/Crabbe/Goyle.

I still do not really understand the purpose/point of the factions. Why they formed, why all of the personalities must be the exact same. Even with the houses in Harry Potter they all still had completely different personalities (Slytherin being the only exception, of course.)

Overall, I enjoyed the bok though I hope Insurgent will clear some questions up about the factions, the history of the factions, and of course for some blushing madly-ness from Tris and Tobias.