I think the concept of this book was really brilliant, but I don't feel like there was enough substance in this book and that characters were a bit overlooked with the problems they dealt with. Stuff seemed to be resolved quite quickly, like a plan for freeing the camp and Jason finding out his mum died was very quick, whereas I felt if it was drawn out and the meeting with his dad had more talk and more of a face off, it would have made more sense.
What I liked about the book:
- The plot
- The characters, one being from each area I thought would be quite difficult to follow, however, I felt like they melded well and each individual was easy to follow due to no crossover at the start
- Setting was easy to follow, I didn't feel confused about what was happening or the situation in which the characters live in

What I think could be improved:
- Communication between characters felt level surface (especially with Rose and Harriett), where they could have had much more interesting conversations considering that they were from 2 different areas and wanted to know how the other operated. I know Harriett delivered messages, but I can imagine she would have been similar to Rose in wanting to know what it was like to live elsewhere
- More complex ways of issue resolution - It might have been the point of the book, but the lack of losses on the undergrounds side when fighting the camp guards felt lacking- it all felt a bit too easy to bomb some buildings and have so little casualties on the side that is fighting
- More background to the characters

It was hard to follow this story. I have mixed feelings about recommending it. I kept restarting the book & never felt any comfort level following it.

This series takes place in the future when America is divided after The Great Civil War into different areas. The real history is hidden from people and all is not well. The reader follows several young adults as they take their places in their areas and try not to get in trouble with the government. This series is different from other ya dystopian novels because where the characters come from is not a big part of the story. The characters goal is more of the focus. This is a great start to a series and I’m very interested to know what comes next.

DNFd at 7% for a few reasons
It wasn’t gripping me. I tried reading the book for a week and just wasn’t in to it at all
The amount of times the word Martin was used is insane and made it less believable
Martinsburg , eastern Martin time
All their expressions were Martin’s something or other Martin coins
It was all too much
Plus the whole shoe horning in of the history didn’t feel realistic and very info dumping
So I just wasn’t enjoying it
I think it’s also party my mood so give it a go but not for me

It's the late 21st century, and the former United States of America has rebuilt after the Great Civil War. Under the thumb of a dictator named Martin who believes that ethnic groups simply cannot mix, the nation's remaining major cities are each walled off into four segments: Ivory, Obsidian, Havana, and Little Asia. Everything from greetings to holidays to food is segregated, and different groups may not mix even in academic or professional situations. At least, that's how things are aboveground.

In the decades since the Great Civil War, a resistance has been pushing forward. And now four young people in one segregated city find themselves in the midst of it. Marcos dreams of leaving Havana to be a truck driver, but finds himself moved to a prison camp. Harriet has been an Obsidian code-runner for much of her life, but her participation is about to ramp up. Rose, a Little Asian, pursues academic success while contending with the new knowledge that her mother has been resistance for a long time. And Jason, the son of a powerful Ivory man, finds himself tasked with overseeing these secret prison camps. As Rose and Harriet train, Jason attempts to use his clout to bring the camps down while Marcos works to strengthen their forces from the inside.

Divided is the first in a planned four-part series, with second book Caged coming next year. While the book is technically well written and the characters are believable and unique, this is a very by-the-numbers YA dystopian fiction. There's nothing especially bad or wrong with being a by-the-numbers example of a genre, but we've come to a point where I read a very similar book practically once a month. It's true that fiction, especially YA fiction, follows trends. Just because it's understandable that we got a bumper crop of zombie and plague fiction in the wake of the pandemic doesn't mean we can't wish for more variation amongst it. The same is true of dystopian near-future American fiction under a divisive dictator: I understand that everyone wants to tell this story, but this is an opportunity for multiple insights rather than the same one on repeat.

There's also a concern that, in many cases, I don't know what's an in-universe issue versus an author oversight. For example, while it's demonstrated in the text that the four racial subdivisions are messy (with some people being "misclassified" and disparate cultures being Occam's Razored), there's no mention of Indigenous people at all. If that's a plot point, it's tense and menacing; if the author simply forgot about Indigenous people, it's concerning. Similarly, are the on-the-nose names of the subdivisions uncomfortably bad because we're meant to cringe away from them as readers? There are so many things in this book that could go either way like this; and while I want to give the benefit of the doubt, I can't know in one book if I should.