[Book Review] - Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Title: Delirium
     Author: Lauren Oliver
     Series: #1 - Delirium
     Format: Hardcover
     Release Date: August 2nd, 2011
     My Rating: 4.0 out of 5.0

Ninety-five days, and then I’ll be safe.
I wonder whether the procedure will hurt.
I want to get it over with.
It’s hard to be patient.
It’s hard not to be afraid while I’m still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn’t touched me yet.
Still, I worry.
They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness.
The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.

My Review:

     This was far beyond all my expectations. I am a huge, huge Lauren Oliver fan and she just continues delivering a love story unlike any other. There was something about how Lena and Alex just seem to fit together that makes the whole story take your breath away, page after page.

     The funny thing is, when I started the book I sat down and was thinking to myself, what would have to happen to cause this to actually become reality? There wasn’t anything I could think of, aside some random crazed scientist proclaiming that Love was worse than AIDS or some serious contagious treachery against all humanity. However, the reality was I bought into the world. This world where people were fake, no one cared or loved one another after their “cure.”

     Lena’s transformation through the book, going from wanting the procedure; even counting down the days until her procedure, to going to wanting nothing more than to sit in the little abandoned broken down with Alex next to her. The transformation was the book, the love story and the entirety brought me so close to them that in the end I wanted to throw the book in anger. I was actually saddened to see this book end, and well the ending in general.

     The reason I didn’t give this book a 4 instead of a 5 was the enduring fact that some of the relationship between Alex and Lena seem a bit stretched, and not natural. How they go about struggling to understand what is real and what is real in this dystopian novel. The other issue I had was that Lena was a true romantic, she’s weak and so emotional that I almost wanted to read more on Hana then on Lena. These were the major flaws of the book, and when the end came and went I was okay with them, they weren’t too glaringly wrong for me to enjoy the book and not want to put it down.

     I wish Lauren Oliver the best and I do have Pandemonium and Before I Fall coming up in the future, but this book falls in place with how good of an author she is. I just hope she does decide to keep the damn love triangle out of her work. I can’t wait to get to Pandemonium, and then to Requiem in the future.