Divergent by Veronica Roth

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“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.” 

-Veronica Roth, Divergent

In Divergent, we discover a world in which young adults have a difficult choice to make at age 16.  There are five factions, the sixteen year olds must choose between; Amity or peace, Candor or honesty, Edudite or knowledge, Dauntless or bravery and Abnegation or Selflessness. And yet there is another group, one that is not recognized by the government and in fact is destroyed when discovered. This group is called Divergent. These are the people that display high levels of traits from two or more factions. Our main character, Tris is divergent and the book is written from her perspective.

I don't know about you but I think it would have been impossible for me to choose at age 16 which faction I would fit best with. I just wouldn't know myself that well. 

They do take a test to help them determine which faction would best suit them but still, at that age, who could make a decision that would mean you might not get to see your family ever again. Even though I go to University an hour and a half away from home, I still see my family all the time.  So, the fact that these 16 year olds have to make a decision that will affect the rest of their lives permanently was something that I was interested in seeing. And Veronica Roth made the decision difficult. She didn't show that it was easy, she showed that it was a difficult choice but one that might benefit Tris. 

Not to mention that Veronica Roth describes her characters and their choices well. I know I don't mention the movie but I thought I'd do a comparison. When Veronica Roth described Four, I pictured him as lanky, coordinated with muscles but not bulky in the least. But the actor in the film is much different from this portrayel. I only mention is because of the way that I felt Veronica Roth described him. Also Veronica Roth described Tris' decision and the difficulty she had making that decision wonderfully. She made it seem as if Tris was really suffering over the decision instead of quickly moving over Tris' decision in order to move to something more action packed. We also get to delve a bit into Four's mind and we are given some insight into his personality without Roth switching perspectives or having Tris read more into something correctly than she should. I find that Roth has created characters that are perfectly normal and she's done it easily. 

Overall, Veronica Roth has an amazing writing style and there are a lot of the quotes from the book that could be inspirational such as the one above. I love these little gems of inspiration and I love that Veronica Roth is able to include them.

I do have to admit that there is one flaw in the book and that is that there's not really much lead-up to the climax. It just jumped right in, with very little clues pointing to the fact that it would end how it did. It just shocked me and well sometimes that's good, in this case it was a point against for Veronica Roth. I'm not saying that the book wasn't great, it was. But Veronica Roth could have made it better by leaving small clues that would have given the readers some idea of what was going to happen if they could piece them together. 

Otherwise Divergent is a marvellous book to read. If you loved the Hunger Games, then it's a good book for you. However if you also read the Testing and found that you loved it, then Divergent is definitely the book for you! Please let me know your thoughts on Divergent in the comments below!!