Divergent literally won all the awards on Goodreads last year, and that combined with nothing but generally glowing reviews made me decide to pick up this novel as my next foray into young adult fiction after The Hunger Games. Whilst I certainly wasn't bowled over by this novel, it certainly has some good points.Perhaps the biggest asset that Divergent has is Tris, who is (like Katniss) a strong female heroine. She doesn't follow the rules and whilst she doesn't grasp everything first time, she becomes a force to be reckoned with as the novel progresses. I will admit the whole 'I'm not really all that pretty'/guy falls in love straight away trope in female heroines is beginning to annoy me a little; but on the whole, Tris is a great character to be in the head of throughout Divergent.Another thing that I liked about Divergent was the world that Roth created. Although it wasn't quite as detailed as would have liked, I understand that Roth has two more novels to come in the series and so more about the society will probably be released as it goes. The idea of factions based on personality traits working together for society was certainly really interesting. The apparent split in ideals, for instance, that took place in Dauntless sounded really interesting. I also enjoyed the way Roth depicted how the different factions view each other, and especially the way towards the end of the novel she began to show the factions turning against each other.However, to me the romance with Four, the enigmatic initiate instructor fell a little bit flat too me. Although Four is given some development, revealing his past, to me he seemed to fall a little bit too much into the 'tough guy with secret softness' mould for me to really connect to their relationship. Plus, whilst the whole novel was fast paced, in a cinematic way, in the final few pages it seemed to suddenly pack a load of action in to pave the way for the sequel, which jerked me out of the novel somewhat.That being said, Divergent is a good debut novel for Roth-especially considering how young she is. I haven't quite decided whether to pick up Insurgent, but Divergent seems a pretty solid addition to the young adult dystopian trend.
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