Divergent by Veronica Roth

One choice decides your friends
One choice defines your beliefs
One choice determines your loyalties - forever
One choice can transform you

Synopsis

My family might be able to help me make my choice, if I could talk about my aptitude test results. But I can't. Tori's warning whisphers in my memory every time my resolve to keep my mouth shut falters.
Caleb and I climb the stairs and, at the top, when we divide to go to our separate bedrooms, he stops me with a hand on my shoulder.

"Beatice," he says, looking sternly into my eyes. "We should think of our family." There is an edge to his voice. "But. But we must also think of ourselves." For a moment I stare at him. I have never seen him think of himself, never heard him insist on anything but selflessness. I am so startled by his comment that I just say what I am supposed to say: "The tests don't have to change our choices." He smiles a little, "Don't they, though?"

I say ...

This is the first book in a trilogy (which the second is out with Insurgent as the title - haven't bought it yet...maybe later if this one proved to be interesting and worth to read) by Veronica Roth. I've never heard nor read any book by her, but I was intriqued by this book. Clearly on the cover page, this book won some awards and is highly praised, not to mention reading the reviews...trapped me into buying and reading this. When I first opened the page, I just wished that this is not another-vampire-book (do you notice, ever since Twilight's boom, almost half of the fictions published deal either with vampire, warewolf, or any mystical beast) or magical-books ala Harry Potter. I'm sick of it...and am looking forward to something different. And after I weighed and flipped the book over, seeing I could eat this up in a short time (well I did, in a day 【ツ】ƗƗє²² ƗƗє²² ƗƗє²²【ツ】), I fell asleep after the very first page LOL.

And it was something...well, not in a totally different aspect (it still has a right portion of romance, some packs of action, and a lot more about questioning yourself) but still the basic idea in this book was a fresh one. The story tells about a teen-girl life but in a very wise (mature way) by exploiting the very basic human traits (suddenly I remembered those aptitute test that I took years ago...felt a lifetime before LOL).

It is about the questions that we asked during our childhood, about confusion that we wondered during our teen, about decision that we made when we entered the adult-life, and maybe about the dream/wishes that we regretted in vain during our old-days. It's about what we wanted to be instead of what our parents underlined for us, about what we wanted to achieved instead of what the teachers or other people expected from us, about how we life our live instead of the standard norms dictated by the social.

It's about family bonding, trust and friendship, with betrayal that can't be avoided. It's about struggle to compromise between our beliefs and standard norms. It's about challege and fear that should be dealt with. It's about freedom to create an utopian world to live in.

I can see sinister remark on every simple jokes said within this book. In a way, it was pretty scary, because this book exploited both, the goodness and the ugly side that most of us hide behind our facade. Half way to the end of the book (which reminded me a lot of Hunger Games trilogy), I still didn't get the main idea of it. Only up to the last 100pages, then it got more interesting. I like how the author put up some test at the appendix, just to sort you into the faction (or dorm in Harry Potter or district in Hunger Games). And apparently I ruled out the Abnegation faction and have quite dispersed attribute on others. But according to the test, I would be a good amity (〃▽〃) 哈 哈 哈 (it's quite hard to say correct or not but who cares)

Cheers for the utopian world   :-)
*while reading the newly-bought-Insurgent*