Allegiant by Veronica Roth [UPDATED]

What if your whole world was a lie?

What if a single revelation—like a single choice—changed everything?

What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?


I promised myself and the few people I know that actually read my reviews that I wouldn't put in any spoilers for this book. I promised, but that means the review is going to be shorter than usual.

So this book was pretty good. I definitely liked its predecessors better, but it was a good, conclusive ending. I really hate "endings" that leave things ambiguous and unresolved, but don't worry, there aren't too many questions on the last page of Allegiant.

There were a few bits and chapters that I thought didn't seem to have too much impact or a necessity to the rest of the story, but those were few and far between. There were a couple of characters that seemed to act a little differently than what I was used to them behaving (See: Tobias chill-axing with Peter, of all people).

I really liked the changing perspectives between chapters, from Tris to Tobias, but it would sometimes create frustration for the reader when we knew what one character was thinking and doing, but keeping it from the other. Like, haven't we already figured out that that doesn't work, guys? You just end up fighting!


Overall, a satisfying ending with a little bit of frustration around the middle, but keep your tissues close by in the last 70 pages or so.

Blonde Rating: 3.5/5
Goodreads Rating: 3.7/5
Amazon Buyers' Rating: 2.9/5

Sorry, this review is a little lame, but i promised, no spoilers. Check out the Insurgent and Divergent reviews. They are spoilers galore.

Thanks!
The Blonde

UPDATED:

So I've had time to really sit on this review and my thoughts about the ending and the series as a whole, and I've heard about the crazy people and their death threats to the author, and how upset they were about the "shock" at the end of the book, and I've decided that I don't like this book as much as I thought I did.

I loved Divergent, don't get me wrong, and I actually really liked Insurgent, which a lot of my friends are saying they hated, but Allegiant just did nothing for me.

I will say that I still liked the switching POVs, but it seems pretty dumb now, knowing that, really, nothing is happening in this book.

Think about it. They're just sitting around, gathering "information" that doesn't really help or harm them until about the last 100 pages or so. In a book 550 page book, the last fifth of it shouldn't be the only interesting part.

While I will always appreciate well-constructed prose, it can't always make up for an overly drawn out finale. 

I'm re-issuing my rating to a 2.5/5 

and I'm giving the series as a whole a 3/5

Sorry for the update, I promise I will sit on and think more thoroughly through my reviews in the future.

The Blonde

The Book Hangover

The Book Hangover

I've heard the term, "book hangover" before, but I didn't realize just how much a good book is like alcohol until after I turned 21.

Think about it:

• Drinking puts your mind all out of whack, just like when you're in the middle of a good book, and nothing you say makes sense because all you can talk about is the story.

• At a family party, if you're drinking, you're probably doing it to isolate yourself from all of your relatives. I did the same thing with my books, when I would read at family gatherings.

• When you're reading too many books at once, you get easily lost and confused about who is who, which character belongs with which backstory, and where-the-heck-are-we-going?

• When you wake up the next day after finishing a particularly thrilling and involved novel, the wake of that story leaves you dazed and probably more than a little sad. And you probably have a headache from staying up so late to finish, and you don't really want to do much of anything but eat your feelings for that character you liked that died at the end.

• You tell yourself "I'm never doing that again" when you wake up this way, but in no time at all, you're back on that wagon.

I have found that there are really only two ways to combat and prevent a book hangover:

1. To not read.
2. To start about fifteen-thirty pages of a new book just before you finish the last one.

For me, option 1 is not a possibility, and it probably won't ever be. I don't want to be book sober, and I hope I never will be. 

Option two is one of my own making. I have determined that, by just-barely starting a new book in the last fifty pages of the one I'm about to finish, I can "keep the buzz" going when that first book ends in a blaze of glory. Instead of moping around and getting "hung-up" on that last book, I've already got something to look forward to, because I've read just enough of the new book to know who the protagonist is and what kind of trouble he/she is facing.

It's not a perfect strategy, but it works for me. If I wasn't constantly reading two or three books, I'd probably never have gotten over [SPOILER] Dumbledore's death [SPOILER] or, more recently, the end to the Divergent trilogy.

It's hard, ending something you've spent 150-700 pages working on. It's hard to let those characters go, but we have to accept that story has to come to an end. In some series, we learn the hard way that they maybe should have ended sooner than they did, but whatever. I've come to realize that overly empathetic readers like myself need to have multiple things to focus our thoughts and emotions on, or else we'll put our whole beings into the stories we have in front of us, and a part of us dies with the end of the book.

I'm not saying feeling strong emotions for books is wrong, but it isn't right to let it control you. It is fiction, it is not real, and we must learn to let go. I personally move on faster when I have something new to hang onto, like a new project, craft, or book.

This is not a step-by-step program to rehabilitate your addiction. It is to nourish it, and help you get addicted to great books, so when you do consume your "poison," it's not crap.

I am NOT by any means saying that alcohol and reading are the same thing, or that they are the same kind of addictions.

In fact, I encourage you to nurture your addiction to books.