I think what I found most enjoyable about this book was that for the first time, in what seems like ever, I read a YA book series and loved the main female character. You get YA author's who like to pretend that they have these awesome, relatable, strong female character but who, in actuality, solely have identikit female 'heroine' who we're told is 'strong' and 'independent' but whose main character arc is 'will I make out with this boy, or that boy in this chapter?' For some authors it seems that the dreaded love triangle is the extent of their aspirations for their female characters - as though having a woman dithering and being fickle or manipulating the emotions of the male characters in their life is something to aspire to. 
 Veronica Roth, on the otherhand, has decided 'to hell with that' and actually bothered to make a female character who knows her own mind. She is strong, she is vulnerable, she is real and finally someone that I haven't wanted to strangle. She has a love interest (the forever wonderful Tobias/Four) but she is more that her love story and that is what is great about her. She makes a hard choice, she lives with it but she has moments of regret, moments of fear, moments of anger, moments of clarity - all these moments are what makes her a character that it's easy to root for. She's not beautiful, she doesn't have the emotions of ten men in the palm of her hand...she's not a caricature of a 'heroine' and that is a good thing. 
 I only read this because the second book was due out, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to it. It's definitely got some of the better YA characterisation around, and it's not only easy to read, but it's also engrossing. It left me with enough questions to make me desperate to read on, and not one of those questions had to do with 'oh, this book is missing a love triangle'...who knows, maybe other authors will catch on at one point. I won't hold my breath on that, but at least I will always have this as an indicator of how YA can be done without relying on over-used, bad plot devices.