Divergent (Divergent #1)

I really enjoyed the world building in this book it was new and very well put together.the story line in this book was just all around amazing but I feel that books 2-4 ruined the whole series. I almost wish this was just a book by itself.Anyways this book I really enjoyed, tris and Tobias were great characters.

I really enjoyed this book and it worked really well with the twists and turns. There were times when I just couldn't put the book down. I heard about it from a group of friends, and the movie was coming out, so i decided to try it.For a Fantasy Romance reader, I really didn't expect there to be high hopes, But, boy, was I surprised.
Tris was just beautifully written with her strong character, and I could clearly relate to her feelings. I also found myself being moved in a different way. Roth clearly had a clear image in her mind of what she wanted her protagonist to be like. She made a good choice writing from Tris's point of view.
Four was great. He wasn't shown much, but it was clear from the way that he was always there when Tris was in need made him a perfect love interest. Even I fell in love with him. His caring and protective feelings of Tris are not shown too much through out the book but they are clearly there.

I would really like to see more of Tris and Four's relationship through out the second and third books.

When I first read this book, I was so happy with it. I adored each and every character so much and the plot was to die for. And a couple of months later, I picked it up again...
I realized that the characters were somewhat of replicas of every other YA novel. Think about it; a strong leading female role who tries to show that she's strong enough to deny all possibilities of 'love' until it all falls into place. Does that not sound familiar? The plot to me had now become repetitive from other YA novels to after delving further into the basic story. Think again; a society divided because of a war that had happened, and it's to try and put things at ease between the government and the portions of a separated country? All too familiar.

HOWEVER...
I enjoyed this book whilst I had it in my hands reading it, so I'm not going to let my advanced future knowledge of reading this ruin any reputation I could have given it too much. I did enjoy it, so I'd rather not harm my affection for it until it becomes something of nothingness to me.
I know many dystopian fans will love this series.
(Oh and I'm not going to lie, I cried like a baby in the final installment of the trilogy; Allegaint.)

This is a fast-paced easy to read YA novel. I enjoyed it, but there is a major plot flaw at the end which really annoyed me and discredits the whole book. I'd recommend it to teenagers despite that though.

It didn't take me long to get immersed in Beatrice's story. I felt for her that she didn't exactly fit in and felt she was on the edge of her faction, the people that her family belonged to, the ones that she grew up with. When she takes the test to help her determine her faction, she realizes why. When she chose to leave her faction, I felt for her, but also admired her bravery. I don't know that I could leave everything I knew, and my family for the unknown.
Beatrice, or Tris is kick-butt and I liked watching her really determine what she thought was right and learn to stand up for it. With each trial in front of her, she realized more of her motivations and that she couldn't be boiled down to just one word, one character trait.
I appreciated getting to know Christina, another transfer and watch them learn about the faction and face challenges together.
I was kinda shocked at some of the betrayals and decisions that a few of the characters made. I was left in this position of almost seeing where they were coming from, but never being able to justify it. Then there were the actions of certain members in leadership that I don't think I will ever be able to forgive.
Four was a constant mystery to me, I wasn't sure where his motives lay and especially at first, couldn't get a good read on him.
Divergent was definitely entertaining, and I will be reading the next one. I liked it, but I do have to say that I have read other dystopias that I liked better. It was good, but not mind blowing to me. I think that I wanted more information than this book gave me about exactly what being a divergent meant and why it was such a secret. We see clues, and I guess that I understand why we don't see the whole picture, but it was just too clouded in secrecy and I didn't understand why. I also needed a bit more world building. I felt like I knew the qualities of the factions oh so well, because they were explained over and over, but not so much why they were there or how they worked in the world that is different from ours, and I am not really sure why.
This is a very gritty book, it has violence, a bit of gore, and hard issues. It was hard to read about the characters I'd come to care about fighting each other, getting beat up, and going through other trials. It was also hard knowing that not all of them would make it until the end. Every time something happened, I wanted to halfway close my eyes because I didn't want one of the characters I'd just started liking, or had respected from the beginning become an outcast.
Bottom line: Enjoyable start to a trilogy. I liked it but it did not live up to the hype for me. While I really liked Beatrice and the characters, something didn't completely click with me.

I love this series, I love the Roth is a new, vibrant face in the YA fiction world. I love that she is herself young and reaches out to her fans in a way that is relatable. I want to be her best friend!

Honestly, this book was a thrill ride! I couldn't put it down without thinking "oh, man. I'm missing something!" and then picking it back up and, five pages later, staring at it with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. It's not the normal love theme,either, where the guy swears to protect her and goes on and on about how he loves her... No. Tobias/Four is fully aware of the strength that Tris possesses and he respects her. As for Tris... Her personal story is amazing. The sense of belonging that she found as soon as she joined Dauntless and the journey from sweetheart to baddie is just so cool. I can definitely say that if this trilogy ends well then it will be on my All-Time Favorites list!!!

Divergent is the first book in a trilogy by Veronica Roth. The setting is a future dystopian Chicago, where the city - and presumably the country (although nothing much is ever said about the world outside of Chicago) - have been split into five factions according to personality:

Abnegation (the selfless)
Amity (the kind)
Candor (the honest)
Dauntless (the brave)
Erudite (the intellectual)

All children are given an aptitude test when they are 16 to determine which faction they are best suited for. Then, in a public ceremony, they choose a faction for life. If the faction is different than the one they were raised in, bye-bye family ("faction before blood" is their motto).

Those who fail to assimilate into their chosen faction are the factionless, doomed to live in the projects and take the "undesirable" jobs (like janitors and sanitation workers). Ouch.

The narrator of Divergent is Beatrice, or "Tris," as she prefers to be called once she leaves her Abnegation family to join the daredevil Dauntless faction. Her aptitude test results were inconclusive, ruling out only Amity and Candor, and making her "Divergent" - something that she doesn't understand, but is told is something she must keep secret if she wants to live.

After deciding that she isn't selfless enough and that her inner monologue is too snarky to really belong in Abnegation, and never really considering Erudite at all, Tris begins initiation into the Dauntless faction, most of which consists of jumping on and off of moving trains, hallucinating her worst fears, and hurling herself from great heights. She bonds with her fellow transfer initiates (all of whom are either from Candor or Erudite), develops a crush on her 18-year-old instructor, and gets beaten up a lot.

Eventually, Tris' Divergent nature starts to help her excel in her training -- a little too much. She is warned repeatedly -- with little to no explanation -- to keep her Divergency hidden. And ultimately, through some shoehorned monologuing by the Bad Guy, we learn why it upsets the Powers that Be so much for her to be running around, Divergent. Unfortunately, by the time she learns the truth, it may be too late...

Plot contrivances aside, I really enjoyed this book. No, I don't think the factions were explained well, and I don't believe a lot of the rules of the world makes sense. But I was able to suspend my disbelief enough to immerse myself in Tris' POV, and when you just accept that everything in her world makes sense (even though it doesn't), it's an enjoyable read. I'm hoping that some of the more practical questions about the world, why it exists, and how it functions are answered in the next book in the series, Insurgent.

I also hope to see Tris a bit more well-rounded in the next books. She is remarkably self-absorbed, suspicious, and unforgiving in her treatment of others. Even though she was supposed to have equal aptitude for Abnegation, Dauntless and Erudite, I didn't see many selfless or intellectual traits in her (she figured a couple simple things out using her wits, but the Erudite are supposed to be the exceedingly intelligent, not just the not-stupid). It's a puzzle, considering she spent the first 16 years of her life among the Abnegation.

This book isn't perfect. The characters were sometimes confusing. Sometimes infuriating. Some of the plot twists really come out of left field, and others you can see coming miles away. There are gaping holes in some of the logic. And the world building is extremely under-developed.

All that said, I still enjoyed it. It's fast-paced, it's entertaining, and it's escapist. It was a fun way to spend a couple afternoons, and I'm looking forward to finding out what comes next in Insurgent.

Awesome!

Put simply: I love this book. I stayed up way too early in to the morning to finish it, I reread it obsessively for the entire summer, I recommended it to all my friends, and I have been dying to get my hands on the sequel.

That said, I feel like my rating for this book should be a little higher, but I cannot honestly give a better rating with the criteria YABC requires me to grade a book by. So let me explain.

The writing style. It really was not anything special. Just a normal, first person POV. It doesn't warrant a five-star rating for writing style, nor do I want to bring my overall rating lower by giving it three stars. Therefore, four stars it is.

Characters. Beatrice, or Tris, as she renames herself, is an amazing, brave character. Not fearless of course, but she's also not afraid of her fears. She's gutsy, but constantly underrated, and she's nowhere near perfect. While I really loved Tris, I would find it perfectly understandable if anybody wasn't too fond of her as a character. Oh, and Four (who, yes, is a character) is awesome. I don't know how else to put it; he's brave, kind of angry, mysterious (well, maybe he's mysterious; it took about a minute for me to guess his "secret" sort of thing), and I love the relationship that blooms between him and Tris - nothing TOO sudden (read: they do not fall in love with each other as soon as they look at each other), but complicated and passionate and, overall, unique. So why did I take one star off for characters? There's just not enough of everyone else. The minor characters feel either one-dimensional, or they're not given enough screen time for me to totally care. I felt like I should've cried at one point in this book (don't ask, this is spoiler-free!), but I didn't know anything or have any reason to feel like Tris did at that moment.


And finally, plot. A lot of YA books these days are very taken over by the romance aspect, even though blurbs and summaries advertise otherwise. This is not one of those books that makes the romance the main point, nor does it seem like the romance is simply a subplot. It's too front and center to be a subplot, but it cannot be considered the main plot, either. There is a very fine balance between the romance and the overall plot, one that I very much enjoyed. Aside from the romance, the plot was intense, exciting, adventurous, fun... barely a dull or calm moment. Veronica Roth is great at intricate world-building. It might start off a bit slow, but that is purposeful. Afterwards, you feel everything Tris does - fear, excitement, indignation, bravery. The book focuses mainly on three of the factions (Abnegation, or selflessness; Dauntless, or bravery; and Erudite, or intelligent), leaving out the other two. This is a good thing, because you are not overwhelmed and it leaves much more room to build on the intricacy and complexities of each of the three factions that are focused on. The other two could be explored in the next book (because yes, this is another trilogy). Conclusion: Awesome, action-packed book that leaves you always wanting to know what happens next and impossible to put down.

I highly recommend this book for people who like: dystopian, romance, adventure, action, YA books in general.

Also, isn't the cover awesome? :)