Delirium

So I spent a few days trying to decide what to make my first book review. This YA book, I had recently re-read and decided it would be a good place to start. It would help people to see what I mean about being honest in a review. This book is quite popular and seeing how many times I've seen people reading it in person or on Goodreads, I thought I should check it out. So I did.  And here is my honest review of:

DELIRIUM by Lauren Oliver

Delirium by Lauren Oliver
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'll start with the positives:
Cool premise- Love as disease to be cured.
I liked the relationship between Hana and Lena, I thought it was well written and loved them going for their runs together.
The chapter intros from different books in the world of Delirium were very cool and gave a neat perspective of where people's thinking was.


After that, it gets sketchy. The book was a slow start. I really had to make myself keep going and that's unusual for me. The biggest problem I had was with the way the plot rolled out.


*SPOILERS START HERE*


Love is bad, it's a disease. Lena can't wait to be cured. Until she meets Alex, and she falls in love. Not an unusual story arc. Actually it's not unusual for any teenager to believe they are in love with someone. Most do experience that, or an extreme crush they call love- however fighting the need to be 'cured' is somehow portrayed as on the rare side in this book. I would think it'd be quite the opposite. Hana is experiencing all these new things, freedoms, breaking curfew, going to parties and associating with boys *gasp* but is willing to undergo the cure because that's what is expected? That's a pretty atypical teen perspective.

"You said this is what I should do? Okay." It's not what most teens would do, no mater what the consequence.

Even more confusing is that, for Lena's mom, the 'cure' didn't take. She had to be 'cured' three times and then commits suicide. Lena has all these memories of her mom, basically, loving her. She has experienced love (without it being labeled that), yet she's willing to throw that away and have it taken from her- like her sister did.

Even if you accept all that, why would people ever undergo the 'cure' to begin with all those years ago? As a society, we don't want people taking guns, cigarettes, and alcohol away from us, but we'd willingly turn over our capacity to love?

Nope.

I debated reading the next book Pandemonium because I thought, "Maybe it's me. People really like this series." So I peeked at the summary and saw a love triangle was going to develop and went, "Yeah, no." Lena is so desperately in love with Alex that she leaves everything she knows... only to meet up with another guy when they are apart who she despises and she falls for him? Doesn't follow the whole 'in love' thing with Alex so I'm going to save my money and keep looking.


I suppose if angst and love triangles are your thing, this might be a series you'd enjoy. But if you've ever truly been 'in love', I think you will see how a number of things in this just don't quite add up.

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I'd love to hear your thoughts and feel free to disagree with me. I love a good discussion!

Thanks for Reading My Mind