Shelf Life: Veronica Roth
6 min readWelcome to Shelf Life, ELLE’s books column. In this ongoing series, authors share an assortment of their most memorable reads: the books that have shaped their lives as writers and as human beings. Every month, ELLE will feature authors with a new and upcoming release of their own, asking them which stories have impacted their work most—and which stories they recommend you pick up next. Whether you’re on the hunt for a book to move you, calm you, or change you, consider a recommendation from the writers in our series. Perhaps one of their favorite titles will become one of yours, too.
When it was time for Veronica Roth to go back to the world of Divergent, she wanted her latest installment to double as healing. The product of this reimagination is her newest book, The Sixth Faction (released on October 6)—in the novel, she explores “an alternate universe version” of Divergent in order to change her relationship with the series, which spawned a trio of movies led by Shailene Woodley and Theo James amid the 2010s dystopian fiction craze.
In her April 2026 feature with ELLE, the author explained that she internalized the criticisms that the Divergent series received upon its release, and as a result, often chose not to acknowledge the work. She later changed her mind after attending Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour in 2023 and was inspired by the pop star performing tracks from the earliest parts of her career.
“It made me feel like, ‘I would love to find a way to experience joy associated with this series again. I think it would heal me in a deeper way, and I would like to give myself permission to appreciate the work I did when I was 24 years old,’” she explained. “The way that I know to recapture joy is to make something new.”
The Sixth Faction—which Roth describes as “a sprawling, complex futuristic world you want to get lost with an intimate love story at its heart”—follows Beatrice “Tris” Prior, who has a decision to make at the Choosing Ceremony. When tragedy strikes, she makes a decision that finds her at the center of a brewing rebellion. “It was sparked by a dynamic I wanted to explore between two characters, this deep wound between two people destined to fall in love,” she says, teasing the romance that fans adored in the original series. “I wanted it to ache in the way that good love stories ache.” The Sixth Faction is the first book in a duology, with the second novel planned to arrive in 2027.
This time around, Roth is keeping her hopes for the new book simple: “All I ever really want is for someone to say they miss reading it when they’re done with it.”
Roth, 38, is based in Chicago. In addition to being the bestselling author of the Divergent book series, she is also the author of The Shards and Ashes anthology, The Carve the Mark duology, the Curse Bearer series, and The Burning Empire series; runs her own Substack; and earned her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University.
Dive deep into her book recommendations below.
The book that:
…made me want to be a writer:
It’s hard to narrow this down to just one, of course, but when I read Dune by Frank Herbert at age 12, it really blew my mind. It has such big, multifaceted worldbuilding, and it introduces you to that world through the story of one family—I loved that balance, obviously, and I wanted to create stories that immersive myself.
…helped me become a better writer:
Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh. The prose is so crisp and beautiful, it was like drinking cold water. When I read it, all I wanted was to develop my prose so it could read that way one day.
…I read in one sitting; it was that good:
The Seep by Chana Porter. It’s a strange, beautiful novella about a woman dealing with grief and heartbreak in the aftermath of the world’s best alien invasion. How do you build meaning in a world where this alien entity can give you almost anything you want? I took this book into the shower with me because I couldn’t put it down.
…is my favorite book of the year (so far):
The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed. The scope of it is impressive—it has a large cast of characters who, together, tell the story of discontent simmering and simmering on this generation ship until it boils over into revolution.
…I’m most eager to read this year:
If someone could just pour the next Robert Jackson Bennett book—the third in his detective-style mystery/fantasy series, A Trade of Blood—directly into my brain, that would be really great.
…has the best sex scenes:
Have you read any Christina Lauren yet? Just saying.
…has the best magic system:
I love any magic system Holly Black builds, but I particularly loved the alternate-reality, magic-is-known system in her Curse Workers books—there are seven different types of “workers,” who can enact their magic at a touch, usually to manipulate people. I particularly loved that doing magic always comes at an equivalent cost to the practitioner—it raises the stakes immediately.
…is the best vacation read:
These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean, an inheritance game on a stormy island featuring toxic WASPs and a great love story. I could not stop reading it. What a mood.
…made me weep uncontrollably:
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I already knew how it ended when I started it, but the horror and the loss of it crept into me anyway. Ishiguro has a knack for breaking your heart slowly and thoroughly.
…recently surprised me:
The Calamities by Chuck Wendig. It surprised me just because I’m not usually a horror reader, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but this one—about the demonic families whose sinister powers secretly run our world—was dark and visceral and interesting.
…I’d like to see turned into a TV show or movie:
The short story “The House of Aunts” by Zen Cho, which is from her collection Spirits Abroad (all of the stories therein are absolutely worth reading). It’s a great teen “vampire” story—the character is a pontianak, which is a kind of zombie-vampire in Malay mythology, and she falls in love for the first time…but she has a household of meddlesome aunts to contend with. It would be a refreshing change from the typical sexiness of the teen vampire canon while scratching the same itch.
…has the greatest ending:
The World Gives Way by Marissa Levien. She made the right choice for the story, and it was so satisfying and heartbreaking and perfect.
Bonus Questions
The literary organization/charity I support:
Writers and Artists Across the Country (WAAC) helps set up author visits for under-resourced schools. Visits are always accompanied by free books for all the students, and they get the chance to hear from an author (or artist) personally, which can be transformative for students who maybe need that personal connection to get into reading or to imagine themselves as writers for the first time.
My ideal reading experience:
My ideal reading experience is one that’s so immersive you don’t care where you are, you don’t care when it is, you forget to eat, shower, or walk the dog (sorry, Avi), and you feel that blend of “don’t want to finish because it will be over” and “have to keep going or I’ll die.” That’s what I’m always chasing.
A tip or trick that has made me a better reader:
Get into audiobooks! I sometimes struggle to start new books because it takes me a while to get into them, and audiobooks offer a low-stakes way to get started—you can play them while you clean, cook, or go on walks, so that you can become immersed. And a good audiobook performance can bring new life to a story.
I would describe my reading taste as:
Eclectic, mood-based, with heavy science fiction and fantasy leanings.