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Divergent (Divergent, #1)

Veronica Roth

Start date: August 1, 2011

Finish date: August 31, 2011

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What Members Thought

Jan 03, 2012 Morgan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, fiction, post-apocalyptic-dystopic-utopia, kindle-read

Most of my friends list on here has read it and they either are foaming at the mouth in love with it or foaming at the mouth hating it.

Either way there's a lot of foam happening.

I finished this 3 hours ago and have basically spent that time doing other things and trying to wrestle with how I feel about this book.

I'm still not all that sure really. So that's why 3 stars. Middle of the road. Didn't omfg love it, but didn't hate it either.

THE BAD

Tris. Is that wrong? There were times that I could li ...more

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Oct 27, 2011 Nairabell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-star, teen-ya-dystopian, read-in-2012

In futuristic Chicago society is divided into five factions: Erudite (the intelligent), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Candor (the honest) and Amity (the peaceful). Upon their sixteenth birthday everyone must choose a faction, either staying in the faction they were born into or breaking from their family and leaving for another. But when Tris makes her choice she cannot begin to fathom the ramifications or how drastically her life or the world around her is about to change.

Th In futuristic Chicago society is divided into five factions: Erudite (the intelligent), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Candor (the honest) and Amity (the peaceful). Upon their sixteenth birthday everyone must choose a faction, either staying in the faction they were born into or breaking from their family and leaving for another. But when Tris makes her choice she cannot begin to fathom the ramifications or how drastically her life or the world around her is about to change.

This is the first book in the Divergent trilogy and is probably one of the most-hyped books I've read in a while. Having now read it, I'd actually say that it is overhyped to the point that I was left feeling let down by the storyline. The sheer level of "oh my gosh this is like the most amazing book ever!" meant that while I enjoyed the book, I was expecting something incredible and this isn't quite at that level. There is a lot of missed potential, particularly in the world building, and the book is overly long for the amount of storyline covered.

It is clear that this is set in a future Chicago which has been devastated but there is no explanation. Each faction has it's own areas of the city, but again these aren't really described. There are a lot of hints to the factions and their purpose but things are kept very vague, most likely to be revealed in future books (which is a plot device I dislike immensely). Even the conflict between the factions of Abnegation and Erudite is kept off the page which means that it only ever seems incidental. The other thing that bothered me was that the pace started off pretty quick and then slowed.

The entire book is basically set around Tris selecting and then joining a faction. While I liked Tris and the way she thought things through, she could be really immature and stupid at times which didn't fit well with the times when she was smarter or braver. As the book went on Tris became more confident and coherent within herself. Four is one of my favourite parts of the book. He challenges Tris, forcing her to become a better person while also being incredibly sweet and supportive.

I liked how the other initiates were shown as joining a faction includes some pretty serious hazing. There was a great spectrum from the horrible Peter to Tris's awesome new best Christina. As Tris is kept with the other faction transfers this does explain a bit more about each faction without info-dumping, and it also means that the concept of bullying can be handled in an innovative way.

All in all, this was a fun read and I'm looking forward to Insurgent.

Plot: 8/10
Characters: 9/10
Ending: 9/10
Enjoyment: 8/10
Cover: 9/10

Overall: 43/50 ...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Marcy rated it liked it · review of another edition

I enjoyed this book well enough, but I was a bit disappointed; I think I was misled a bit by the previews for the movie. I expected a story about a girl who finds out that instead of having a faction she belonged to, she was found to be Divergent and she had to go underground with the rest of the people who had been classified as such. The actual story is that, after being found to be Divergent, she has a different faction marked in her results and she then chooses another group, the Dauntless. ...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Heather rated it liked it

Good premise and an ok YA book. The ending was a bit of a disappointment. It is like she stopped doing character development and just filled in the outline. It also has a cliffhanger that is more like a TV series and expects you to pick it up next season or at least the next book. That was a bit of a turn off for me so I won't be reading the next book...at least not right now.

Still I liked the main character. I enjoyed the thoughts behind this book and parts of it were well done. I can see why ...more

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