Book Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

OH MY GOD.

Seriously.

I literally just finished Delirium, and now I want to just explode. Halfway through this book, I ordered the second one, because I knew that I was going to want it. But it won’t come in the mail for FIVE MORE DAYS… Just kill me now.

Yes, it was that good. With a hell of an ending. OH. MY. GOD.

So…there are a lot of mixed reviews for this book. Some people hated it, some people are obsessed with it, and some people were just “ehh.” For me, I don’t know what it was, but I washooked right from the very beginning. I absolutely loved the premise. So original! So awesome! I’m fangirl-ing all over the place right now! This was my first book by Lauren Oliver before, and now I just want IT ALL.

Delirium was just so crazy-freaking-good. I loved how the main character, Lena, wasn’t a badass right from the very beginning. She wasn’t Katniss, she wasn’t Triss…she was commonplace, she was ordinary, she was just following the system because it was all she’d ever known. In the beginning, we get to see from her perspective why the idea behind this society — “curing” people from the “disease” of love when they turn 18 and matching them with life partners — is a “good” thing and why she is so excited to go through the procedure. When Lena learns that her friend, Hana, isn’t as excited about getting cured as she is, Lena is upset and feels betrayed and confused.

I really enjoyed getting to see Lena grow, be courageous, and take the initiative to learn about what has been going on behind the scenes, because she is truly worried about her best friend. And when Lena does see what is truly going on in her society, she realizes that everything she’s ever been told is. a. lie.

There were a few things about this novel that did bother me, although I was so into it that they didn’t take away from my overall enjoyment of the novel too much.

Firstly, there is barely any world-building. We know kind of a lot about how the society works during the time that the novel is set, but we don’t know anything about how it got to be that way, besides a few sentences that basically went: “People realized love was bad…now everybody gets cured.” Obviously that just isn’t enough information. But I’m hoping that, since it’s a series, we will learn more about that later. For me, as long as the world-building makes sense in the time that it is occurring, I’m okay with it, and it doesn’t usually affect how much I like the novel. But it’s still a flaw that it has.

Secondly, I didn’t really LOVE (ha.) the relationship between Alex and Lena. It wasn’t totally “insta-love,” but it did move kind of fast for my tastes. Although, I do think that you can kind of justify that by thinking about how Lena has never been exposed to love or the kind of feelings she starts to have for Alex before. She’s never experienced it, so I think that it’s kind of natural, especially as a teenager, to get caught up in those brand-new-love emotions and get carried away, and end up moving fast. There was also a time issue at hand…they are sort of “making up for lost time” in a way, because Lena’s curing date is coming up fast. It wasn’t necessarily the fast-paced relationship that bothered me as much as that, because it was quick, I had a hard time liking them together as a couple. They didn’t really seem to have anything in common or ever really even have conversations. There was a lot of Lena thinking about Alex and reminiscing about time spent with him, but not really a lot of scenes with them actually being together.

So those were the two big flaws that I found in Delirium, but like I said, I still LOVED THIS BOOK. Like a lot. I can’t wait to find out what happens in the next one! I have a huge to-read pile, but I don’t think that I’m going to be able to stop myself from jumping right into Pandemonium once it arrives on Wednesday!

(see my review on Goodreads)

Miranda Mowbray

Book Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

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