Divergent

Divergent is set in a future where society is divided into factions based on character traits or virtues - a Belbin test taken to the extreme. The groups are Erudite (interested in accumulating knowledge); Candor (those that tell it as it is); Amity (peace loving): Abnegation (selfless) and Dauntless (adrenaline junkies). In a Belbin test, the answer is that elements of all the different traits are ideal but being a "Divergent" in the novel is to be an outsider and dangerous. 

The book is a page turner and a quick read but quite why society is divided up into these groups is never fully realised and its clear that this system is not one that could ever be sustainable - they all dislike and mistrust each other and there seems to be no production or manufacturing. 

When Beatrice chooses Dauntless over her family's Abnegation, the story takes us into an in depth initiation into the Dauntless faction. This takes up most of the book and does feel similar to the Hunger Games in pitting fellow teens against each other to see who succeeds the trials.
 

Carrie

This is not the first time I have read Carrie, having had a Stephen King phase in my late teens, and apart from the cultural references, his first novel from 1974 hasn't really dated. Comparing it with some of the author's later bloated books of doorstop proportions, Carrie is a first-rate paranormal thriller which takes little time to get to the set up (its on page one that she is telekenetic) and telling us that something terrible is going to happen.

It's that foretelling, dotted throughout the story, given to us through published reports, the media and interviews with survivors that helps to increase the tension and makes it inevitable that we expect Carrie's harsh upbringing by a crazy religious zealot of a mother and teasing by school A-listers to have harsh consequences.

Following Carrie's humiliation in front of everyone on Prom Night, however, the scale of destruction visited on the town of Chamberlain is devastating.