Teen Review: Divergent

Next week on Thursday, June 9, the Dark Days of the Supernatural Teen Tour will be joining us here in Austin.  (For more information on the event, click here.) One of the authors that will be speaking and signing that night is Veronica Roth whose new book Divergent has been getting all sorts of buzz.  To get some local opinion of the book, we had a few of our teen reviewers read it.  Here’s what they had to say:

Divergent
By Veronica Roth

“In this book, Beatrice Prior lives in dystopian Chicago, where society is divided into 5 factions:  Erudite, the intelligent; Candor, the honest; Dauntless, the brave; Amity, the peaceful; and Abnegation, the selfless.  Everyone is supposed to choose one of these factions to devote their lives to when they turn 16.  But what happens when you don’t fit the mold?  What if you’re Divergent?  You could be in great danger.

I enjoyed this book very much.  The characters were surprisingly easy to relate to and understand, and there is a deep layer of emotion sewn into this book that is missing from a lot of YA dystopia novels.  The characters have emotions, not just feelings.  There was also a lot of action and suspense, which was fun to read, but there was also a good dash of romance, which makes any book better.  I recommend this book to anyone who likes action, adventure, romance, and especially the Hunger Games series, and can’t wait for the next installment to come out!”

“I had stepped into reading this book [Divergent] blindly, not knowing nearly anything about the novel. I must say I was far more than pleased. This novel matched my taste in novels precisely with its perfect amounts of action, romance, and even hints of darkness.

Though this story is set in a completely different world than the world we are surrounded by, it poses choices that teenagers today can be faced with in different forms. The romance that arose throughout the book was genuine, and I really adored it despite my usual dislike for romance. The story was extremely well paced and never ceased to hold my interest and attention. I would find myself yearning to read throughout the day in order to find out what would happen next. I, by nature, can usually only swallow around 30 pages at one sit down of reading before becoming distracted, but this was not the case with Divergent. I would sit for hours reading hundreds of pages at one time.

For me, I know that a book is fantastic when I find myself dreaming about it and going about my day imagining I’m in that world. On numerous occasions I found myself doing exactly this, and will continue to do so until the sequel is released and my imagination is inflated even further. Overall Divergent was an incredible read and it easily rose to the top of my list of favorite books.”

—Nicole, age 13