Book Review: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

I'm sure you've all read my review of Divergent by Veronica Roth.

If you haven't, you can see it here.

Over spring break, I read the second book in the trilogy.  It's called Insurgent.

I LOVED IT.

Sometimes the second book in a series is less than amazing, because it is usually the boring stuff that happens after something begins, but before the really exciting ending stuff starts.

Not this one, this book had way more action in it than the first book.

However, I was a little frustrated with Tris and Four.  Bicker, bicker, bicker.

Tris really steps out in this book and embraces her divergence.  She struggles the whole book trying to decide what she is, where she belongs, and finally, she just embraces that she doesn't belong in any ONE place, she is a human with multiple likes, wants, and ambitions.

So good.  Read it, you won't regret it.

5 out of 5 stars!

Book Review: Divergent by Veronica Roth

This weeks book review is on Divergent by Veronica Roth.

Keith read this book first because he saw the trailer for the movie. I had no intention of reading it until one day, he was taking a long time to go somewhere and the book HAPPENED to be sitting on the counter next to me.  I started reading on a Thursday night, and finished it Sunday evening.

I love books like this.  The ones that are impossible to put down.  I read in every spare moment, in the bathtub, while I was cooking dinner, at bed time, waiting at the eye doctor with my mom.  I just read and read.

LOVED every second of it.  The first chapter had me so involved that I couldn't stop reading.

Then it gets REALLY good, there is a little love, a little fighting, and a lot of really great story lines.

When I saw this book, I was like "Oh great, another Hunger Games knock-off, but BOY was I wrong.  This was nothing like the Hunger Games and dare I say, it was even better.




Synopsis:
In this post-apocolyptic world, society is divided into five factions.

• Abnegation (the selfless)
• Erudite (the knowledge seekers)
• Dauntless (the brave)
• Amity (the peacemakers/peacekeepers)
• Candor (the honest)

Tris is a young Abnegation girl who has reached the age where she must take the Aptitude Test to determine which faction she truly belongs to.  I won't spoil it.

She takes the test, and chooses a faction.  Then she makes some friends, and has to go through initiation.  She finds a boy named Four, and he is awesome ((I told Keith that I have a fiction crush on him) and I actually had a dream about him last night!)  He and she get through a bunch of stuff, and then crap gets real.

I can't tell you anymore because I don't want to spoil it.  So go read this book because I give it a 5/5 stars!

It is so well written, and the way Veronica Roth describes and writes about things, it makes it seem like I am there, and I can actually see and feel everything that happens.

The movie came out on March 21, 2014.  I plan to write a review on the movie as soon as I see it.

I'll let you know, until then... Watch the trailer.

Book Review: My Story by Elizabeth Smart

Its time for a book review.

I recently read My Story by Elizabeth Smart and Chris Stewart.

When I decided to read this book, I had heard a lot about it.  I remember when Elizabeth Smart got kidnapped, it was all over the local and national news, and it hit especially hard since I live in Utah, and am just a few years younger than Elizabeth.

I started reading and was almost immediately enthralled in the story.  It was captivating.  BUT, this book is not very well written.  In other reviews I've read, the blame is on the Ghost writer Chris Stewart.

There are WAY too many exclamation points, and it is written in a very naive tone.

The story is amazing, and I really enjoyed the book.  The writing style was just not quite my forte`.

The book is also written so that it seems like the entire time, she is trying to convince readers and herself that she doesn't nor did she ever have Stockholm Syndrome (when a kidnap victim feels some sort of affection or attachment to her captors.)  I don't feel like she needed to explain herself so much.  She was a child, she was afraid for her life.  The end.  I felt like she spent most of her time explaining why she did what she did, and that she was acting out of fear, not out of affection.

It did keep me at the edge of my seat.  She has many close encounters where she was ALMOST rescued, but something always stepped in the way.

Synopsis:
Elizabeth Smart was a young Mormon girl from Utah who was taken from her bed that she shared with her sister. She was taken in the middle of the night by a man named Brian David Mitchell.  He claimed to be "Emmanuel, prophet of the lord"  He insisted that the lord had commanded him to take Elizabeth to be the first of 7 virgin child brides.  He took her, married her, and abused her for 9 months while his wife, Wanda Barzee helped conceal his secret, and watched the abuse.

They lived in the mountains in a secluded camp above Salt Lake for a while, and then as winter approached, they left Utah for the warmer weather in California.

During this 9 months several people approached Mitchell and inquired as to Elizabeth's identity, but somehow, Mitchell would always get out of it...

Great story. Writing Style... not so much.


Over all, I give this book 2 1/2 out of 5 stars.

I would recommend this book for the story line, but not for the writing style.