Divergent

Oh, my wardrobe, so surprisingly divergent. Maybe you think you bought a roomy tunic/shirt-dress situation, but then bam, you became pregnant, and it turned into the perfect business attire of a pregnant lady.

Pink tunic - Bebe, Belt - Primark, Leggings - Roots, Shoes - Aldo

Seriously, my closet amazes me. And I didn't even realize this was an option until I went fishing for something to work with the debut of my Christmas purse.

Purse - Dooney & Bourke

You're wondering why a green purse inspired me to wear bright pink.

That's why.

All together now!

Pink and green is also a fun, preppy combination of colors.

Speaking of the divergent nature of my closet, have you read Divergent by Veronica Roth? It's the latest young adult book to get tons of hype, a la The Hunger Games. Worth it? Keep going to see my super long review...

In short, I was disappointed.

So it sounds promising. A girl of sixteen must decide on one of five factions, which dystopian Chicago is broken into...I am already confused. Does the rest of the world no longer exist? How many people are in the world/Chicago? How many people in each faction? Because they seem kind of small? But that doesn't seem right, because if there are so few of them, then it seems silly to be broken up like they are. Okay, whatever, we let that go, thinking it will be explained later (it's not!) because ah ha, more promising things ahead. Because our main character Beatrice is Divergent, meaning when she takes a test of her character, she's split evenly between three factions. One of these quickly gets tossed aside because she's grown up as Abnegation (the selfless) but has always been tempted by the life of the Dauntless (the brave), so really, these are her two choices. Wait--why did she take this test? Because she still gets to choose, and everybody keeps rattling on how it's your choice. Does that mean your test can show you're, say, a Dauntless, but you choose to be...Candor (the honest). I'm not sure why somebody would do that, but it just seems like if your whole society is based on these five factions, you would want to make sure you get people sorted correctly.



*Read on if you feel like, Eh, I don't want to bother with this book!*
Anyway, though these questions are popping up all over the place, you still think, Cool, let's find out what Beatrice's faction is all about (**SPOILER** she chooses Dauntless). Okay, the Dauntless faction jump in and out of moving trains. What? This is stupid. I can't even properly picture this, and it happens all the time. This is supposed to show you're brave? It seems to me that it shows these people are stupid. Can you not learn to stop the train? Since you haven't bothered to learn that...I guess you haven't bothered to learn how to slow it down? I guess it's on this neverending loop at the same speed? What is going on?!

Tris (this is apparently a cooler name than Beatrice) quickly proves herself by jumping off of a building (I...don't know), but then the real trials start. First there's a phase with a lot of fighting, also learning some about guns and knives. This is necessary because the Dauntless protect the Chicago borders or something? So hand-to-hand combat learned within a span of, what?, a couple of weeks, is going to go well for them. How much time has actually passed? I have no idea. It's frustratingly stupid.

Then Tris and her fellow Dauntless wannabes get put into simulations where their fears play out and they must overcome them. This is a piece of cake for Tris because of her Divergent-ness (because somehow being selfless too makes her...braver or something). One of her fears, though...having sex with her instructor, Four. Yes, they call this man Four. Except he's not really a man. Sure, he's a top dog instructor, and one of the members of his class is a Dauntless leader, but they're only 18. This is hysterical to me. Even when Four explains this away by saying age isn't important (I guess your level of bravery is what counts), I still just shake my head. Your faction leaders are 18? This is so clearly going to make things go wrong, I can't even handle it.

Anyway, we were laughing about Tris being afraid of sexy-times with Four. There isn't much more to say about that except I guess this is supposed to show how innocent Tris is? Or make her relatable? Or just appeal to a young adult audience? I'm not sure. But I do know that I didn't particularly connect with or like Tris. She's jumping from trains and getting tattoos a little too quickly for me to feel like we can relate (yeah, they get tattoos and go right into the fighting ring. The future has painless, fast-healing tattoos, I'm assuming).

So Tris, along with some help from her mother, who actually does seem pretty cool, figures out that Erudite (the intelligent) and some people from Dauntless are planning on taking over. The Erudite do some mind control on the Dauntless soldiers, who storm into Abengation's section (they control the government because they're so selfless and not given to greed and stuff) and try to kill everybody. Whoa, that's dramatic. Tris's badass mom saves her, then dies. WTF. She was pretty much our best character. And right when I'm thinking maybe in the next book, Tris's father can give us some awesome flashbacks of the badass mom, her father dies too! Ugggghhhhhh.

I can't even remember clearly how this ends. Four and Tris break the mind control over the Dauntless and we're left to wonder how the factions will deal with this mess in the next book. I will not be dealing with this mess unless people promise me that shit gets explained.

The end, and you're welcome.