20.8k reviews for:

Divergent

Veronica Roth

3.93 AVERAGE


though my fourth wing is divergent fanfiction theory still stands - xaden riorson you will NEVER be four

I loved this book it was great!!!! A little gory but not bad at all. I think its a little less likely to occur then another books about the future i have read but a good book

Pretty obviously followed the Hunger Games formula (plus a barfier love story) but I did have a hard time putting it down, regardless.

I guess I'll start this review by saying that this was a worthwhile read as it held my interest the entire way through. Part of that was due to my curiosity as to what was going to happen and partly because it was making me angry and I needed to know if it was going to redeem itself at all. First off, the dystopian world was very interesting. The idea of having people be placed in different factions based on values reminded me of Hogwarts sorting. However, the author never really explains the world our hero Tris lives in. Maybe we'll get more background in the later books, but for this book it got a little frustrating at times. Another thing that is not well explained is what being divergent really means.
Spoiler We find out the main character is divergent which I guess means she could be in any faction instead of just one. This is for some reason really dangerous to be but we never really find out why. We also find out that divergent people can outsmart the computer system but again, we never find out why. What do those two things have in common anyway?
But, who knows, maybe the author will explain that more in the sequel.

Another thing I had a problem with were the dauntless. The dauntless are suppose to be brave and how they show this is by dying their hair funky colors, getting tattoos, jumping out of moving trains and beating the living daylights out of each other. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think any of those count as a brave act. What was interesting about this though was that I could not tell if the author had intended for the dauntless to be stupid daredevil showoffs or if they were truly meant to be considered brave. Either way, it kept me interested enough to keep reading to find out, and although we never get a clear answer it is an interesting topic to discuss.

Now for the characters! I'm still deciding whether I liked Tris or not. For one thing, she definitely is not a mary sue. She has weaknesses and she even acknowledges them. However, that does not stop her from being unlikable. The things she thought about her friend Al were really maddening. She also acted like she was really tough and brave having only been with the dauntless for about a day. As the book progressed I found myself getting more annoyed with her.
Another main character was Four. Again I don't know if I like this guy or not.
Spoiler He eventually becomes Tris' love interest but the romance between the two seemed really forced and out of no where. He was really mean to her and yet she still somehow liked him. I'm still unsure of why he liked her.
He was an okay character though, a little too perfect but what can you do.
The character I really liked though was Al. He was really interesting and probably the most connectable. He reacted the way most people would if they were told they had to beat each other in order to become a dauntless. His growing crush on Tris was handled well. And to be honest I wasn't sure if he was going to be the love interest or not. I thought his character was done well except
Spoiler for when he attacked Tris with some other guys and it is never fully explained why


My biggest issue with this book is the ending. It felt very rushed and out of the blue. We go from a lot of training and slow paced action
Spoiler to a full blown war! and it literally happened over night
. It felt like an entirely different book.

Although this book has its faults, it is worth a read because it brings up a lot of interesting topics. As far as dystopian futures go, it is not the best but it isn't the worst either.
fast-paced

This is….not a good book. By almost all measures it falls short. Plot is riddled with gaping holes, the world building is shoddy and the stakes are never fully contextualized. But unfortunately you are only 12 years old at the height of the dystopian craze once and reading this book then created an inextinguishable flame of nostalgia that even now, 11 years later, I cannot drown. All 2.5 stars are fed by that nostalgia. 

read this for the nostalgia. Remembered it as being a lot better. Apparently the author wrote this entire thing in her winter break, and it shows. 

This is an excellent book, one of my favorites in the genre. I didn’t care for the focus on racy stuff: describing physical contact and romance and all that, but seems impossible to get away from. The story is really solid, I like the concept and the world.

devinadivecha's review

2.0

I started out intrigued by the premise of this book, and it was interesting up to a point. Then the flaws kicked in. No sense of world building, flaws in certain elements of the story line - in fact, the basic premise that society is divided to preserve peace is ridiculous ... who has ever seen a divided society stay peacegful!?
Anyway, the heroine, Beatrice/Tris is part of one of the factions the society is divided into, and on her sixteenth birthday, like everyone else, has to choose which faction she belongs to, after taking some simulation test that will claim to know where she best fits. The factions are Abnegation (the selfless), Erudite (the knowledge seekers), Amity (friendly farmer types), Candor (the honest folk) and Dauntless (the renegade risk-takers). There are also the factionless who apparently do nothing but amble around or drive buses or something.
So Beatrice is tested Divergent, which is dangerous apparently and we don't know why. We later find out that
Spoilerit's because the faction leaders are scared of people they can't control and Divergent people think in different ways and don't have a one-track mind. So they're not cows, congratulations.

She has to hide this testing and goes to the Divergent faction. Then the story focuses on her trials and tribulations, and awkward love-fest with the HOT, SMOKIN' OLDER (by 2 years) FOUR. No really, that's his name ... Four. But we find out later that his real name is
SpoilerTobias and he is Divergent too!!! GASP, HORROR.

Stuff happens, and because the book has to move forward, naturally thngs go wrong and people have to fix it. Follow Beatrice through her adventures etc.
I wanted to like this book, I genuinely did. But it wasn't a YA book that leaped out at me. Will I read the rest of the series? Yes. Why? Because I want to see how it ends. I'm hoping I don't totally hate my reading journey to the end.

This book was sooooooooooo good! It kept me on my toes, brought twists and turns galore! READ THIS BOOK! Even if you aren't a young adult!
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