Divergent book review

Divergent by Veronica Roth
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I finally finished! I basically was forcing myself to get through it so that I could write a proper review. Well, this is a bit of a conflicted review. I was inspired to read this book after enjoying the movie. The plot is pretty creative, and I really love it, however, I think the author kind of missed a great opportunity here. For me, the author focused too much on the parts of this story that shouldn't have been so prominent throughout the novel, which basically ruined it for me. I didn't want to read 300 pages of teens beating each other up for practice, the inner workings of a brooding teen that basically shuns all forms of human contact, and an endless obsession with tattoos and piercings. I am not going to lie, it was weird. You could not go an entire chapter without reading something about a tattoo or a piercing. At one point I found myself just wishing that the author would just get a tattoo and be done with it. I felt that the book was going nowhere up until about the last 100 pages, and I'm sorry Veronica Roth, but that doesn't make for a good book. I am so sad to give this book only 2 stars, because I had such high hopes for the premise of the novel. This is probably the first time I have ever said that the movie is better than the book. There were times I was reading the book excited for a part that I knew was coming from having seen the movie, only to discover that all those good parts were not present in the novel. The technology was more fleshed out in the movie, the human interactions made more sense in the movie, and Tris was really a lot more likeable character in the movie. Honestly, I am much more impressed at the creative ideas used within the movie. I will eventually read the other two books in the series, maybe, but only because I actually purchased the entire trilogy in hardcover.

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