Insurgent, Veronica Roth

Insurgent by Veronica Roth
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have to take a deep breath before I write this one. Because I have a hangover. I have an Insurgent hangover, and if I hold too tightly to the emotions swirling around in my body I'll lose it. If that's not enough of an endorsement for this, the second of Veronica Roth's novels set in a dystopian future, read on, there's more.

Divergent, the first in the series, sets us up with our main characters: Tris, or Beatrice Prior, whose voice narrates the novels, and Four, her instructor and love interest, along with a host of well-fleshed side characters from family to friends to fellow initiates. Initiates into what? In this future, society is divided into four factions, each guided by a particular proclivity: Amity, Erudite, Candor, and Dauntless. And then, of course, there are the factionless.

For those of you who have not read Divergent, I'm not going to spoil it for you. I'm not even going to say much more about the plot in Insurgent. What I'd like to describe is the way the reader feels reading these novels. You feel like you are THERE, back in THAT PLACE. Not in dystopian future Chicago, but rather in that place a young person occupies, where emotions shift like water and you live and die by the state of your heart and make the rules up as you go.

There were scenes that brought me back to that day in high school when I first met my husband, young and reckless, contrary and entirely irresistible, and other scenes that sent my heart sinking, drowning, like it did the many times we almost lost each other. There was a whole new fascinating world to explore, a world that is so refreshingly different it doesn't make SENSE. Reading Divergent, and now Insurgent, you will find yourself in strangely familiar yet completely unknown territory, and it is that duality that makes Roth's world so captivating.

In short, read it. My only regret is that I have months, or maybe a year, to wait for the next book in the series!

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