An Open Letter About Divergent

From Goodreads

Divergent, by Veronica Roth, is really where Brave New Shelf started. It was the first ARC that I had received, and I had know idea what to expect or even how to go about this review-writing business. All I knew is when Divergent arrived in the mail were the things I read about it from a blurb in Seventeen magazine beforehand.

But I loved it. So I wrote another review, then another, then another.

Getting Divergent into my hands and a deadline in front of me to write for got me back into reading. As embarrassing to say as it is, my reading schedule had pretty much dissolved to nothing before Divergent. And it's not like I was busy either, I was just being lazy.

That's not all of it though. I read more and more, set goals for myself, wrote more than I had before, and started buying books with every dollar I could get my hands on. Heck, I took a job at the public library September of that year! I now own so many books that I had to shift everything around in the top drawer of my dresser to fit more of them in.

But this isn't a post about buying Divergent, or Insurgent, or even reading either of them (but it would be super-cool-awesome if you did both.) This post is about finding the one book that changes everything for you, that one book that either sets something right, like it did for me, or puts you on a different, better path.

Veronica Roth, looking back, receiving Divergent as my first ARC was an honor that I'm still not sure if I deserved, but your book has not only given me the short-run joy that came with the act of reading it, but the long-run happiness that followed by inspiring me to start reading again. You should be very proud of all of the work that you've done, and I cannot help but feel that the Divergent series is only the tip of the iceberg for you.

-Emily @ Brave New Shelf