Divergent

    Divergent by Veronica Roth is a fiction book published on April 25, 2011. In the book there are 5 factions, or groups with different beliefs and lifestyles. When a person is 16 they then choose a faction after taking a test that has a recommended best fit. This book is about a 16-year-old girl named Tris who finds out that she is special, and doesn't fit into only one of the 5 factions and shocks everyone, even herself, by her choice of lifestyle. Throughout the book Tris learns that every choice made matters, even if it doesn't seem that important. 

     This book is in 1st person point of view through the eyes of Tris. Tris chooses the daring lifestyle of the dauntless and learns how to live on the edge unlike her previous way of being Abnegation. She is thrown into a group with all of the other new dauntless people. Throughout the book she has to hide the fact that she is divergent, or that she does not fit into any one faction. Officials are scared of people that are divergent because they have not found a way to control their complex brains. She faces many challenges along the way, but in she ends up being the first in her class, with some thanks to her being divergent. She meets a boy named Tobias that becomes her love interest and she doesn't find it out for a while. Soon she finds that there is something strange going on, but by the time she has it figured out what is going on, it is too late. The erudite and abnegation have a alliance and the erudite manipulate the dauntless as soldiers for the erudite. The erudite's plan is to gain control of the society and Tris will not allow that. The intended audience of this book is teenage readers, but I don't believe that it has anything that a person of ages 10-12 wouldn't be able to handle. The genre is dystopian fiction and it fits in because it shows a society in which government has all the control over all that citizens do. The author kept me interested by adding many plot twist to the point where I stopped trying to guess what would happen because every time I was wrong. Veronica Roth's writing style goes well with this topic because she writes at a fast pace and has a good amount of dialogue so that there is not to much plain writing.

     This book made me realize how important our free will is because without it we could all get so sick of being controlled and chaos could break out like it does here. I personally really like Tris because she's an unexpectedly strong female character but she isn't arrogant and she admits the actually needs other peoples help. I do not like people who believe they are the best of the best and can beat everybody else out and she isn't like that. This book kind of reminds me of the book 'Matched' by Ally Condie but I feel like in this book the government is much less controlling. In the book Matched the government really controls absolutely everything where in this it's just the groups and related things, where the characters can pick their own jobs and do many things to their likings.

     I love the way Veronica Roth really gets into the dangerous life of the dauntless and the way she really goes into the mind of Tris, the innocent young girl who is learning new things all the time. I wish she gave us a little more information on the factions other than Abnegation and Dauntless (Candor, Amity, and Erudite) but at the same time I see why she wouldn't, the book is not about them. I recommend this book for all people over the age of 10, unless of course you do not enjoy dystopian fiction.


Leah Mealey
11/7/13
Rating: **** 4/5