Reading: Divergent by Veronica Roth

The inside praise for Divergent was true. I didn't want to put it down. In fact, I picked it up on Sunday and by Tuesday night I had finished it (which for me is incredibly fast).

It's no surprise that I started reading this book because there is a movie coming out sometime in the future. I kept seeing the casting reports on Entertainment Weekly and thought "I need to know what happens to keep up."

I felt immersed into this dystopian Chicago world as we follow the main character Beatrice or Tris for short as one choice transforms her. I've enjoyed reading dystopian novels since high school. And I think the setting is what really made me power through this book. I wasn't very invested with the characters. I only wanted to know what the big super secret plan was and how it would affect the 5 factions in the book.

Since Tris chooses to join the Dauntless faction, with its wild and crazy daredevils that jump from trains, the story was very action packed from initiate training til the very end.

Some things seemed very obvious to me and less so to Tris such as Four being from Abnegation or that he wasn't being mean, he just like-liked her. Didn't she know she was in a YA novel? Come on.

I thought it was also cheap to bring back her parents only to have them die sacrificing themselves for her a few pages later. It made sense since they were from the selfless Abnegation faction, but did they both have to die to give weight to what happened at the end?

The book cuts off right after the crisis is averted, but leaves you wondering what it will be like the day after. What will happen when everyone finds out what happened? (Will everyone find out what happened?) What will the consequences be? This is all set up for the sequel Insurgent (and then the final book in the trilogy). I couldn't care less about the romance aspect of the book. I'm more interested in how power will shift from the events in Divergent.