I love to read. This is not news to anyone who knows me, or has read some previous blog posts. I would choose to read a good novel over just about any other activity. I’m not normally a “bandwagon” reader. If a book comes out and is wildly popular, I tend to not want to read it. I’ve never read a single Harry Potter book. I’m considering it now… I didn’t read any of the Hunger Games trilogy until the last book was already released. Same with 50 Shades (yes, I actually did just admit to reading those). I jumped on reading Fault In Our Stars late, as well, and can honestly add it to my elite list of favorite books ever read (and the movie was darn good, too).
All of this to explain why I am just now reading Allegiant by Veronica Roth. I had wanted to read Divergent for quite some time, but it was always more convenient to read something else. Then Insurgent, the movie, was recently released, and I wanted to see it. But, I refuse to watch the movies if I haven’t read the books. I read Divergent quickly and went to the library the same day to get Insurgent. They couldn’t find it! What?! It’s a booklovers worst nightmare. Luckily, I have an awesome friend who is a high school media specialist and she got a copy into my hands over spring break. A day and a half later, that was finished and I was dying to read Allegiant. I am in the last few chapters of the book, and I have not been let down. At. All. I love it when one book in a series is better than the last (extremely rare). I marked a passage this morning that really reached out to me (I’m a romantic…):
Just as I have insisted on his work, he has always insisted on my strength, insisted that my capacity is greater than I believe. And I know, without being told, that’s what love does, when it’s right-it makes you more than you were, more than you though you could be.
But it was what I just read that made me get that feeling that only people who fall in love with the characters in books could understand. It’s when Tobias confronts his mother with the memory serum and asks her to choose between him and power.
“Let them have the city and everything in it,” she says into my hair. I can’t move, can’t speak. She chose me. She chose me.
If you haven’t read the books, then you won’t know the impact of that scene, but it’s powerful. Powerful enough that I actually laid the book down to write about it.
