We Can Be Mended – Veronica Roth

We Can Be Mended: A Divergent Story by Veronica Roth

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

We Can Be Mended is a short story set five years after the events of the final book in the Divergent series. We are reintroduced to once familiar characters and get to see what has happened to their lives in the aftermath. That being said, the characters didn’t feel familiar anymore.

I understand the intent of the story. The author wants us to know how the world has evolved or changed in the last five years and what the characters are up to. Her intention and the actual execution failed to communicate. I did not feel why this short story was necessary and I also felt let down by it.

We also are given a new ship with no foundation that would allow the reader to form any sort of connection to the new relationship or root for it at all. It feels more like the author said hey these two are sad. They should be sad together. I don’t understand their connection. I don’t understand why this was included and it was probably the most frustrating part of the story because at least everything else was superfluous and didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The whole premise was “we can be mended” and I get that’s what she was going for, but it made no sense.

The rest of the story was various characters being angsty and not wanting to be involved in society anymore. Arguing over an unborn baby’s name. And other things. I am glad that I didn’t have to pay money to read this story, but since I read it from my library they had to pay money to get it which it was not worth (and they pay a lot of money to acquire the rights to let patrons borrow a book and get charged for each check out and hold on the book just so you know.)

It was also incredibly short so the author had no time to build up to anything in the way I think she should have. It felt more like attempting to cash in on the previous success of her series when launching her new series, then writing something that needed to be written. She did not write something that deserved to have been added to the canon of her world in my opinion.

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