What Happened to the Wines?

Just a quick note of explanation... You may be wondering what happened to the wine-element of this book club. Well, of the 5 women in our book club, 3 are currently pregnant! Perhaps we'll resume our wine tastings in the future.

New Book Announcement - The Winter Sea

Our next discussion will be on The Winter Sea by Susanne Kearsley.

Synopsis from Amazon.com:

History has all but forgotten...In the spring of 1708, an invading Jacobite fleet of French and Scottish soldiers nearly succeeded in landing the exiled James Stewart in Scotland to reclaim his crown.
Now, Carrie McClelland hopes to turn that story into her next bestselling novel. Settling herself in the shadow of Slains Castle, she creates a heroine named for one of her own ancestors and starts to write.
But when she discovers her novel is more fact than fiction, Carrie wonders if she might be dealing with ancestral memory, making her the only living person who knows the truth-the ultimate betrayal-that happened all those years ago, and that knowledge comes very close to destroying her...

Check back for my post-club review on May 20th. Happy Reading!

Divergent by Veronica Roth - Review

Veronica Roth doesn't give much background as to why the world split into its faction-based society, but alludes to its formation as being the result of ultimate corruption dissolving the previous governmental system. In her world, there are 5 factions (Amity, Candor, Erudite, Abnegation, Dauntless), each consisting of members who value one quality above all else and live a life devoted to pursuit of that quality. Choosing a faction means choosing where you will live, what you will wear, what careers are available to you, and who your friends/family will become. At the age of 16, each teenager is tested to determine which faction most suits their personality but the decision is ultimately theirs. Most do not stray from whichever they were raised in, but our heroine did. She grew up in a family who belonged to Abnegation who was all about selflessness, wore only grey, avoided mirrors, etc. It was the safest (or so they thought), but to Beatrice (Tris), sounded like a total drag. She wanted adventure and surprised everyone by choosing Dauntless... a faction so tough that it can only be described as a gang. People actually died in the initiation process, and those who survived were forced to beat each other up daily to prove their strength. It was brutal. Of course, Tris had an advantage -- she was Divergent, which meant she possessed several competing traits and was therefore immune to the faction-control imposed upon her. However, as one would expect, this utopian society ultimately fails when one faction rises up to take control of the others and a fierce battle ensues...

This month's Book Club meeting was a little different. At the beginning of Book Club, we each took a quiz to determine which faction we would be in. Then, we guessed which faction we thought each other would be in and shared our results. It was great fun! I wasn't surprised to learn that I was Amity; I've always been the 'peacemaker' among my friends. Our group consisted of 2 for Amity, 2 for Erudite, and 1 for Candor. We also discussed what would be in our 'fear landscapes'. Some of the answers included sharks, driving off a bridge, snakes, drowning, and being murdered. I, of course, gave a list a mile long, joking that I'd have so many fears that it'd take me a week and a half just to complete the course!

I'm not a big reader of YA. As an adult, I've only read Harry Potter and Vampire Academy (another book club pick), so I really don't have much to compare this to. But overall, I enjoyed this book. It's Book 1 in a series, and from the preview chapters at the end, I learned that Book 2 picks up in the same scene as Book 1, which leads me to the conclusion that this isn't so much a "series" as it is one long book that was chopped into three parts. Still, I think I may give Book 2 a shot. After all, there are still so many unanswered questions...