Book Review: Divergent and Insurgent

I discovered a book series on Saturday evening. Earlier in the week I was scrolling through tumblr when I came across this post:

With me being the movie lover I am, I was intrigued, what the heck kind of movie is this? Plus the caption made it sound like it was a big deal, or really popular. So I looked it up.

This is what Wikipedia told me: 

"In the distant future, the city of Chicago has divided society into five separate factions, each one meant to uphold a particular virtue of humanity: Abnegation (the selfless), Amity (the peaceful), Candor (the honest), Dauntless (the brave) and Erudite (the intelligent). On a given day each year, all sixteen-year-olds must take an aptitude test that tells them which faction they truly belong to. After taking the test, they can decide whether or not to transfer from their faction to a different one for the rest of their lives. 

Sixteen-year-old Beatrice Prior was born into an Abnegation family, but selflessness has never come naturally to her. She feels lonely and constricted by her environment and feels like she doesn't belong. When the time comes for Beatrice to take her aptitude test, the results are surprising: she doesn't fit neatly into any one faction; rather, she shows equal aptitude for three -- Abnegation, Erudite and Dauntless. She is told she is therefore Divergent and is warned never to share this information with anyone."

It sounded pretty awesome to me. I sat on it for a while but I couldn't it out of my head so on Saturday, when I felt like reading something, I found it on Amazon. The kindle version was only $5! Woo! I bought it and just dived right in.

It is amazing. It has a lot of parallels to The Hunger Games. A dystopian society, government revolution, a female heroine. I don't disagree with that. There were many times when I felt a parallel to The Hunger Games but it is a very different book. It has very different themes driving it, and the dystopian society is built very differently and very interestingly. There is almost an equal amount of violence but the reason for it is very different and it is handled in a different manner. 

It has been criticized for being similar to the hunger games but it didn't bother me, it was different enough. 

It was very well written, and the action moved along quickly. It did jump in a little fast, I didn't really get a sense for the main characters motives until later in the story. But I was so caught up in it that I barely noticed. 

I found the entire concept of the book to be completely enthralling. I love how the different factions were built and how they clashed so perfectly with one another. The conflict felt real and plausible. 

The end came too quickly, I read it all in one sitting. 

On Sunday I bought the second book in the series, Insurgent, and dove right into it too. 

It picks up exactly where the first one left off and moves just as quickly. There is a lot of motion in the book, so at times it got a little hard to remember where the characters were at a given time. But I still soaked it up hungrily. 

One thing that I really like about both books is that although there is a love story entwined in it, it isn't all rainbows and butterflies. When Tris, the main character, starts to recklessly put herself in harms way, Four becomes and angry and they pull away from each other do to separate goals. Their relationship felt very real, although it did bother me that the character was so young. 

I feel like it would have been better if she had been 18 and him 20. It just felt weird, but I appreciated the conflict in their relationship. 

I had to force myself to put the book down so that I could study for finals. When I came back to it I figured I would read until midnight and then go to bed but the end came so quickly! I was so upset, I was not ready for it to be over. Especially because the third book doesn't come out until October 22nd and it ended on a huge cliff hanger. 

The second book felt a little like a bridge book, like it was setting you up for the third book where everything is going to go crazy. But it also kept moving the plot along and tied up some questions so it didn't just feel like a complete filler just to make it a trilogy. And the cliff hanger is crazy! I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS. 

How am I supposed to wait until October 22nd!! 

Overall I would definitely recommend these books. They are fantastically written with a very clever concept and characters you care about. They are fairly easy to read and they grip your attention until the very end. Read them!