Delirium

I didn’t notice the face on the cover of this book until someone pointed it out to me. I’d like to think this is because I had my nose buried so far in it that I wasn’t looking at the cover, and not because I wasn’t paying attention.

Lena, the main character, is almost at the age where she will be cured of “deliria” – which is how love is described in her world. The further you read into the story though, the more you realize that what their society describes as love is not the traditional definition. Love to them is an infectious disease that they have been told to fear; one that will drive them to insanity and later lead to death. Their definition of love is skewed so much that it bears little resemblance to ours. Their solution to the problem is a surgery that causes the patient to be unemotional and accepting of whatever comes their way.

There are some impracticalities in the story, such as: if they don’t care about each other then why would parents be worried about how their children fare in life? I suppose that it could be explained as an instinctual desire to provide for offspring, but it did seem like an inconsistency. Or maybe that inconsistency could also play out in later books as the ability of the brain to recover function after the surgery. I don’t know, and the fact was that it really didn’t bother me all that much when I was reading because I was having so much fun.

I zipped right through Delirium and enjoyed it immensely despite any small issues I may have had with how realistic the world was. It is fast paced and intense – as Lena has to decide how much is too much to risk for her friends and her freedom.

I highly recommend Delirium if you like plot-driven young adult dystopian fiction. It is the first in a trilogy – the other two books will be Pandemonium and Requiem. ( )

Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Delirium is about a seventeen year old Lena Haloway who is about to undergo an operation to “cure” her from a contagious disease: amor deliria nervosa (love). She wants the operation, until she meets a mysterious boy named Alex and falls in love with him. She manages to sneak away from the watchful eyes of her protective aunt and explores a forbidden world with Alex. As the operation date draws closer, Alex also leads Lena to discover her mother may still be alive and in hiding. Faced with the truth, Lena must decide whether or not to go through with the operation. She must choose between love and living in the safe government-controlled environment in which she has been raised. ( )

A fast-paced novel set in a futuristic world in which love is a disease - with a cure. Teenager Lena Haloway is eager to be cured; that is, until she meets Alex and experiences the disease of love for herself. Lena's journey into love reveals the lies her world is built on and she comes to the resolution that she must escape this world to avoid becoming a part of it. A fascinating concept and written to keep the pages turning. ( )

I am not one who usually reads romance novels, because they all seem so cliche. Delirium though has a good mix of romance and action, that keeps you on the edge of your seat making you hungry for more. I would recommend this book to anyone who could read this novel. ( )

"Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That’s what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side."

A dystopia, but not science fiction. A story about star-crossed lovers. So many elements from so many other books (see [b:The Giver|3636|The Giver (The Giver, #1)|Lois Lowry|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266448651s/3636.jpg|2543234]), but still amazing. Can't wait for the next one. ( )