Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Book Stats:
Reading level: Young Adult
Genre: Dystopian
Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: February 1, 2011
Series: Delirium #1
Reviewed by: Tynga
Source: Personal Shelf (kindle book)
Purchase: Amazon | Book Depository US/UK
Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn’t understand that once love -- the deliria -- blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the governments demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy.
But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable: She falls in love
Lena was born and raised in a futuristic Portland. Taught since a very young age that Love is a terrible disease to be feared and eliminated, she is counting down the days leading to her Operation. It’s a chirurgical procedure meant to release her from the Amor Deliria Nervosa. Her future will soon be determine: She will be evaluated, assigned a college and a job. A husband will be chosen for her and a set number of child to bear. The whole thing is very comforting to her… that is, until she meets him…
Lauren Oliver did an amazing job when she created her dystopian world. I find it very ironic that the very thing our society craves, Love, is considered the number one plague in Delirium. The whole population goes on with their lives without feeling a thing, like brainless robots and Lena aspires to it, hoping to escape a painful past. Everything changes though when she meets Alex and it was amazing to see the Deliria set in her and witness her reactions as she realizes what’s happening to her, yet can’t bring herself to do anything about it.
I truly enjoyed watching both teens together and the things Lena discovered both thrilled me and saddened me. Lauren really rocked this novel, painting fabulous characters and challenging the reader’s concept of Love, Freedom and Freewill.
Romeo and Juliet is a cautionary tale in this world and I can’t help but compare Delirium to this masterpiece. The story is dramatic, gripping and tragic! I was told to have tissues handy while reading and as I progressed, I imagined dozens of potential scenarios, but the end was nothing like I expected. I was completely taken off guard, stunned, and tortured by its deadly cliffhanger.
I am dying to get my hands on the second encounter, Pandemonium, to be released March 6th, 2012, because I need to know what happens next as much as my lungs needs air to breathe.
By the end of the book, I think one of the biggest question is: Isn’t Love worth taking risks?
Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:
About love:
“The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t”
It’s so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it’s taking forever to come. Then it happens and it’s over and all you want to do is curl back in that moment before things changed.
For the first time in my life I actually feel sorry for Carol. I’m only seventeen years old, and I already know something she doesn’t know: I know that life isn’t life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point – the only point – is to find the things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.
He never takes his eyes off me. His hair is a crown of leaves, of thorns, of flames. His eyes are blazing with lights, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent if we had ten thousand billion years.
