Insurgent by Veronica Roth | Rating: ★★★★★“We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.”
Insurgent, the second installment of the Divergent trilogy, starts off strong and fascinating: picking up directly where we’d left off in Divergent. And with this continuation to the series brings more questions, more action, more romance and overall more badassery in the fantastic and suspenseful world that Veronica brings us. Instantly, we see how certain actions in the previous novel are weighing on our narrator Tris Prior and the results are very, very upsetting.
Our last brush with this world ended in chaos: Tris loses both her parents and watches as members of her faction are put under a very distressing simulation that brings nothing but death. And even though she’s reunited with her sweet and intelligent brother, and Tobias, she is living with not only the grief over her parents having risked their lives for hers, she is also living in the guilt over having to shoot and kill one of her best friends.
Although Insurgent, much like Divergent, has its moments of slowness it is overall a strong addition to the series that is full of twists and turns that will keep you wondering what will happen next, who we can and cannot trust. As usual — Veronica pens the perfect dystopian world that mixes futuristic additions in with the familiar settings that a Chicago native like myself knows. And we have the pleasure of watching Tris grow, as well as the relationship between herself and Tobias/Four.
