What to Read After Divergent: BookTok-Approved YA Dystopian Picks
If you just closed Divergent feeling like you’ve escaped the faction test, dived into a rebellion, and emerged changed — welcome to the post-Tris world. On BookTok the question always is: What next? You’re craving those familiar vibes: unique world, society broken into pieces, a heroine finding her place and pushing back, plus that tension of rebellion and self-discovery.
Here are seven picks that hit those marks and should keep you turning pages late into the night.
1. Legend by Marie Lu
A world dripping with class divide and surveillance, Legend offers dual perspectives (June + Day) as they uncover secrets that shake their society. For Divergent fans who liked the faction system and hidden truths, this hits hard.
2. The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken
When children develop powerful abilities and the world fears them, everything changes. Strong heroine, dystopian setting, survival stakes. If you liked the “what’s wrong with this society?” angle in Divergent, this is for you.
3. Matched by Ally Condie
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This one focuses more on control vs free will: society dictates your partner, your job, your path. If you were drawn to the “choose your faction” idea in Divergent, Matched flips that into “society chooses you”.
4. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
A heroine with a lethal touch, a regime that uses her as a weapon, and the fight to reclaim her agency. If Divergent made you root for Tris’ growth and rebellion, Shatter Me gives similar emotional intensity.
5. The Testing by Joelle Charbonneau
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Think: exams, society picks you, you face life-or-death tests and discover bigger conspiracies. For fans of faction-selection, training, and ordeal in Divergent, The Testing delivers those beats.
6. The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
A darker edge: girls in a society are sent away for a year to purge their “magic” so they can return as wives. Control, oppression, survival, power shift. If you loved the underdog + system breakdown in Divergent, here’s your next ride.
7. Scythe by Neal Shusterman
Although it leans more science-fiction than classic faction/dystopia, Scythe has high moral stakes, a society that has solved death but now must impose it, and characters forced to navigate a broken world. Great if you want “what’s wrong with society” + “rebellion within the system” themes.
8. Bound by the Viking Wolves by Shortbread
A celibate engineer is thrown centuries into the past—straight into the arms of the three Viking wolves who now own her fate.
