(from venturegalleries.com
by Stephen Woodfin)
So this is how it went.
My wife and I were driving from East Texas to Kerrville, a short little 360 mile jaunt. With us we had a thirty-year old high school teacher and a high school sophomore, both of whom were females.
Curious person that I am I soon realized that my back seat passengers were engaging in a bizarre enterprise.
They were reading.
“We’re both reading the same book,” the teacher said as she showed me the cover.
“What is it?”
“Allegiant by Veronica Roth. It’s the third book in the Divergent series.”
Allegiant
“What’s it about?”
She explained something about a dystopian universe, young love, the quest for justice.
Then she and the student fell silent.
For the next six or seven hours.
Actually, the student finished the book first.
She slammed the book shut, gazed out the car window with a far off look in her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” I asked her as I drove.
“I can’t believe it ended like that,” she said.
“Don’t tell me,” the teacher said. “I’ve got a hundred and fifty pages to go.”
“I’m just going to think about it for a while,” the sophomore said.
I have read none of the books in the series.
I tried to guess the ending.
“It’s a suicide pact between star-crossed lovers?” I asked.
“Don’t tell him,” the teacher said.
“I’m not,” the sophomore said.
By the time we made it to Kerrville, the teacher had a hundred pages to go.
We had a banquet to attend that started at 7 p.m.
The teacher came dragging in about 7:20.
“I had to finish that book,” she whispered to my wife and me when she sat down.
Allegiant has almost 10,000 reviews on Amazon. Those reviews are all over the board. But if Veronica Roth can make a teacher and a high school kid stop what they are doing until they finish her book, she must have something good going.
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