Book Club

Ok, ok, it's been over a year since I last posted. But! I have an excellent excuse! See, like many Millennials at the moment, my experience since graduating college has largely been unemployment (other than a stint working at a daycare, but more on that later). Guys, unemployment is mind-boggingly dull. I mean, I don't have to wear real pants most of the time, which is cool, but you don't want to hear about that. Or about how many episodes of Grey's Anatomy I watch every day, which is a lot.

Why, Shonda? Why!?!?!?!

So, I've learned from my months of being at home that it's really difficult to find yourself in uncomfortable social situations when you don't socialize with anyone other than your husband, who is not allowed to think you're awkward.

When we moved to Louisville, I was invited to join a book club. Talking to actual other people!? Sign me up! I probably would have joined a self-surgery club if someone had asked me (like the interns had that one time...get it?...) but luckily they have a book club, which is far more enjoyable and arguably less dangerous.

I went to my first meeting last night and luckily they didn't talk much about the book that I hadn't read. We started talking about Young Adult trilogies and how the last book is almost always terrible. Someone mentioned Divergent and I said, "Oh my gosh, I hated how it ended!" Everyone agreed.

Someone mentioned that she thought it was weird that the entire series had been in first person from Tris's viewpoint and then it suddenly switched in the last book. I though, Hmmm, that's weird. I don't remember that, but it's been a while so whatever.

Then, SPOILER ALERT (but...it's been out for two years so get over it) someone else said, "Yeah, but once Tris dies, Four has to continue the story, so she was probably just building up to that."

Hold the phone.

Tris dies?

When did that happen?

I had no recollection of that happening at all. I told everyone that I didn't remember that happening. I thought that maybe in the chaos of the end of the book, I somehow missed that plot point.

"Uhhhh, it's a pretty major part of the book," someone said.

So, while everyone continued to talk about Allegiant, I sat there, dumbfounded, questioning my reading comprehension skills. Every once in a while, I would mutter, "How did I miss that?" to half-hearted shrugs from anyone that heard me.

I got home that night and immediately looked up the plot summary of Allegiant on Wikipedia. I thought I would read through it and see what I had missed. I got through the first two sentences, before I stopped, dumbfounded.

"Tris is shocked by the video released to the public at the end of the Erudite headquarters raid. The video revealed the truth about the faction system and announced that Divergent are needed outside the borders of the city."

That was the end, I thought. That's what happened at the end of the book.

That's when I realized that I never read Allegiant. 

Apparently after I finished Insurgent, my brain, trying to protect itself from any more terrible writing, tricked me into thinking I had finished the trilogy.

I'm not sure I can show my face at book club again. Anyone up for some appendectomies?