Divergent by Veronica Roth

Oh my gosh.  This series is right up there with The Hunger Games.  No lie.

In future Chicago, there are 5 factions, each dedicated to a particular virtue.  Candor (Honesty), Abnegation (Selflessness), Dauntless (Bravery), Amity (Peacefulness), and Erudite (Intelligence).  Beatrice Prior, and her brother Caleb have grown up in Abnegation, and at age 16, are preparing to choose which faction they will spend the rest of their lives in.  To aid in this decision, every 16-year-old must undergo an aptitude test to discover what factions they are eligible for.  Most people only have one answer, but Beatrice is told she has aptitude for three different factions: Abnegation, Dauntless, and Erudite.  Her test administrator tells her to never mention this, as "Divergence" is an extremely dangerous.  The day comes, and both Caleb and Beatrice abandon their family to join different factions.  Caleb chooses Erudite, and Beatrice chooses Dauntless.  As Beatrice begins a grueling initiation into Dauntless, she renames herself Tris and works harder than ever to join Dauntless as a full-fledged member.  She and the other transfer initiates quickly sort themselves out, and among the enemy is Peter, a violent transfer from Candor, who will do anything, including stabbing a fellow initiate in the eye with a butter knife.  As Tris proves herself worthy of membership in Dauntless, she catches the eye of the attractive trainer, Four.  Four takes Tris through his fear landscape and she realizes that he is the son of Marcus, a leader of the Abnegation faction, and that his real name is Tobias.  The two pursue a romantic relationship, and together discover that the Erudite representative has hatched a plot to destroy the Abnegation and take over the government of the factions.  She uses simulation serum to control the minds of the Dauntless and kill the Abnegation, except for the fact that the simulation serum is ineffective on the Divergent.  Tris and Tobias are captured and taken to Jeanine, the Erudite leader.  Tobias is injected with a new serum that controls his divergent mind, and Tris is taken to a chamber that replicates one of her fears.  She is to be executed, but at the last moment, her mother comes to her rescue and frees her.  They travel to a safe house to get extra help from her father and brother, but her mother is killed trying to protect her.  Tris, Caleb, their father, and Marcus go to Dauntless headquarters to destroy the simulation controller and to rescue Tobias when they meet Peter along the way.  Tris shoots Peter in the shoulder to threaten him and then takes him along with them.  When she gets to Dauntless headquarters, she discovers that Tobias has been controlled to believe that his friends are enemies.  Because he is divergent, the serum does not have as great an effect on his mind, and Tris is able to wake him up.  She witnesses her father being murdered on one of the monitors and has a renewed reason to destroy the simulation controller.  Tris, Tobias, Caleb, Marcus, and Peter hop onto a train and make their way to a hiding place in a different faction's headquarters, prepared to reenter the war.
This is so good!  Oh my goodness, I was so hooked.  There's the romance between Tris and Tobias, which keeps you on your toes and totally gave me butterflies.  And the action!!!! There's so much going on and so much to talk about (and fangirl over, if that's your thing) that you won't be able to put Divergent down!
As another addition to the new string of dystopian fantasy novels that have hit shelves this past year, you may be thinking that it's not worth picking up, it's just another bandwagon novel piggybacking on the fame of The Hunger Games.  To an extent, Roth is riding that wave, but her writing is so authentic and amazing, that Divergent is in a class of it's own.  Using a 1st Person Limited point of view is incredibly difficult, because you don't get that aspect of "this happened to me and now I'm telling the story" but it's very much like you're tracking with the characters thoughts at the moment.  This is a common element in all the recent dystopian novels, and is a trademark characteristic that has made them so popular with both young adult readers, as well as those looking to analyze what makes these novels so popular.  I truly do encourage you to pick this one up, because it is so good!  It is part of a series, and I've also read it's sequel, which I will be posting about next.  I really think you'll enjoy this debut novel from Veronica Roth.

Teaser Quote: “Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.” -Tobias "Four" Eaton