Review: Insurgent by Veronica Roth

Every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves, and herself, while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love. (-Synopsis from GoodReads)

Title: Insurgent (Divergent trilogy book #2)
Author: Veronica Roth
Publication Date: 2012
Publisher: Harper Teen
Number of Pages: 525
Where I Got It: Nook by Barnes and Noble
Dates I Read It: November 6-November 12, 2013
Number of Stars: 4/5
Read It For: Just for fun!


     I really liked Insurgent, despite being confused out of my mind for the majority of the book. I was so confused at the start of this book that I had to view Roth's blog post: But I Read Divergent A Year Ago! which was super helpful in reminding me how Divergent ended since it had actually been more than a year since I had read it. Once I read her blog post I had to start the book over and re-read the first 40 pages, this time with a little less confusion.

(two pages from my reading journal open to the Insurgent entry)

     The characters were still really awesome and we got to see a continuation of character development with our main cast in this book. I really liked the majority of the characters and I thought that they all fit into their roles perfectly. I was pretty pissed off at Tris at several points in the book, and especially at several of the choices that she made and a lot of her reasoning behind her actions and decisions. She is Dauntless after all, though, so I suppose I can't stay too mad at her for too long. I liked how we got to see the humanity of Tris in this book. She is a Dauntless girl in the middle of a factions war, and yet she still spends a great deal of the book feeling guilty about killing someone who was threatening her life. I appreciate Four for the role that he plays. He does a great job as the male lead. I do hope that we get some more from him in Allegiant. I want to know more about him, his back story and his inner thoughts and motivations. Even though I loved the main characters, one of the most annoying things about this book for me was the secondary characters. Roth included an enormous cast of characters in this book and I found it incredibly difficult to keep track of all of them. I wasn't sure who was good and who was evil and who I was supposed to root for and who I was supposed to thumb my nose at and who was born into what faction and who switched to what faction and why. Too much!
     The pacing of the book was excellent. This is a long book (525 pages) but it passed very quickly and I was genuinely surprised when it ended; I had thought I had at least 100 pages to go! I did read this book on my Nook so perhaps that helped quite a bit with my not realizing how long it was. Despite the actual length of the book, it flew by and I think that this was mainly due to all of the action that took place. It seemed that every time I sat down with the book there was a battle scene resulting in an emotionally heavy outcome. These books are dystopian done well and Roth continues the excellency of the world building. There did seem to be some redundancy of action to me which only added to my confusion at times. I feel like perhaps those extra scenes could have been left out. It was still a fabulous book that I thoroughly enjoyed and I would recommend.
     I viewed the second teaser trailer for the Divergent movie on YouTube last night while G was in the computer room and he watched it over my shoulder and he seemed really intrigued. I think it might have
gotten him thinking about reading the books before I drag him to the movie. The trailers look great so far and I highly approve of the casting for this movie. I can't wait for March!
     Oh, and I decided I'm pretty sure I would be in Amity, even though they do dress like Ronald McDonald.

4 out of 5 stars

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Sequels I Can't Wait To Get My Hands On

A weekly meme hosted by The Broke and The Bookish

For this week's TTT I only came up with seven sequels that I can't wait to read. Usually if I find a series that I adore, I read them all in a quick row, marathoning the series to the end. However, in the past few years I have been really bad about picking up the first book in a series, and then neglecting to finish the saga. I really hope to start getting deeper into a lot of sequels soon. Here are the seven that immediately come to mind:

7. The Ask and The Answer by Patrick Ness. Book 2 in the Chaos Walking Series.
I finished book 1: The Knife of Never Letting Go, this month. Even though I didn't enjoy it at first, the ending really took me by surprise and made me want to read The Ask and the Answer.


6. Beautiful Darkness by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl. Book 2 in the Caster Chronicles.
I read Beautiful Creatures in March of this year in preparation for the movie (which I really hated). Though I did not absolutely 100% love the book, I am excited to see what happens next.


5. Linger by Maggie Stiefvater. Book 2 in the Wolves of Mercy Falls Trilogy.
I read Shiver back in February which was the perfect time of year for a snowy, cold setting in a book. I liked the first book alright. Since it is only a trilogy, I do hope to sometime soon finish the next two books- maybe this winter?


4. City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare. Book 2 in the Mortal Instruments Series.
I read City of Bones in May of this year and I enjoyed it. I hope to finish this series and then get started on the Infernal Devices Series.


3. Prodigy by Marie Lu. Book 2 in the Legend Trilogy.
I read Legend in June of this year. I remember reading the entire second half of the book on G's parents couch one afternoon while he and his dad worked on the car outside. I liked this book quite a bit and I am really excited for the next two books. The last book of the trilogy just came out (or is just about to come out this week) and it is pretty highly anticipated in the YA book blogosphere so I need to hop on this bandwagon and get it done quickly!


2. A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin. Book 2 in the Game of Thrones Series.
I LOVE GAME OF THRONES!

1. Insurgent by Veronica Roth. Book 2 in the Divergent Trilogy.
I am so excited to finish this trilogy I can't stand it! This is the only book on this list that I didn't read book 1 of in the year 2013! I read it in March of 2012 so I really need to get going and finish this series up!

What sequels are you excited for? Have you read any of the ones on my list? Which ones do I need to read ASAP?

Happy Tuesday, readers! Yallfest is only 4 days away!!!

#FridayReads 11/1/13

This past week has been so busy and so crazy I did not get a whole lot of reading done. Monday we had a workday at school and despite having good intentions I got absolutely NOTHING done at school and came home and zoned out in front of the tube instead. Tuesday a friend of mine had to be out of her apartment that afternoon so after work a few of us met at her place, packed her up, and got her moved into her new house. Wednesday I came home and crashed for a while then made dinner then ate dinner then crashed again. Thursday was Halloween! G left school/work early to com cerebrate with me so we ate mummy hot dogs and cupcakes and candy and watched Hocus Pocus and handed out candy. Today I was beat from Halloween and so I came home, crashed, got Chick-Fil-A, watched a little TV and started this blog post. Despite all of the activity of my week, I'm slowly working my way through The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black. So far (I'm on page 220) I'm liking it only okay. There is something about the writing style that isn't gripping me and the story is only so-so so far. I am hoping that it will pick up the pace soon. I'm hoping to finish that one up this weekend and then finally get on to Insurgent so that I can stop being the only person in American that hasn't read Allegiant yet. How's this for cray-cray: I was conferencing with a parent at my school the other day and towards the end of the meeting she apologized and said that she was in a rush because she wanted to go buy and start reading Allegiant before her kids got home from soccer practice! I'm hoping to finish up ..Coldtown and review that this weekend and then get started on finishing the Divergent trilogy!
Happy Friday! What are you reading this weekend?

8 days 'til Yallfest!