Allegiant Review

3/5 stars

*This review contains minor spoilers*


I have to say I was beyond excited when I received Allegiant, the final installment in the Divergent trilogy. But, I'm sorry to say that I'm slightly disappointed with it.  To me Roth is a great author. The trilogy had a great story-line, characters, relationship etc. But, this all kind of disappeared in this book. In my opinion, her writing style/skill isn't that great, and I feel that showed very prominently in this book.  More so than the others.

Surprisingly, it was actually the plot of Allegiant that was its main downfall. The plot was all over the place and had little to no organization. Throughout the book, nothing was really made clear. It was just thrown in, event after event. Punch after punch. I don't think a book really needs that. Allegiant had a lot of room to develop more. Roth introduced the new concept of genetically pure and damaged along with many others when, there was still room for developing past themes that were still contributing to the novel. By the end nothing seemed really resolute or resolved and there was just a basic lack of explanation.

Not only that but, the character development was also weak. Lets start off with the main character, Tris. She just seemed very unrealistic in Allegiant. Going back to the first two books, she made mistakes, which made her seem so human. It made her very relatable. For the majority of the book she was never wrong. She automatically became this strong, smart, and selfless person; it went to such a ridiculous extent. With this she became a very condescending character and it made her extremely unlikeable.

As for Four, he seemed to lose his strength. I understand that he's not perfect and that's not what I want. But, in the first two books he was so strong in facing his issues. This Four seems...different...shattered. He lost all his defining traits in this book. He becomes, irrational, weak, and uncertain. I wont go deeper into his character changes though, because I don't want to spoil anything.

Their relationship also wasn't something I could appreciate, as it seemed very contrived. They fought over the smallest things and made up in ways that made no sense. It became very irritating.

As an overall I think the book lacked, plot, character, and relationship development. It was repetitive and disappointing. I may be being a little nice in my rating of 3 stars. I think its probably the sentimental value this trilogy holds for me that keeps me from giving it a lower rating. In truth I would only recommend this to die-hard fans of Divergent or people who just want to finish the trilogy.

*Review cross-posted on my Goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/Cat335