Delirium: A New York Times Bestselling YA Dystopian Romance of Forbidden Love, Revolution, and the Power to Choose (Delirium Trilogy, 1)

Warning: MINOR SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW. Delirium....Wow. What an amazing, heart tugging, gut wrenching, tear jerking, beautifully written piece of literature. I read it in one day. I couldn't put it down. It could be described as a typical teenage love story: a girl who views herself as utterly average is admired by a boy she consideres to be perfect. The girl, in this case, Lena Haloway, meets and eventually falls in love with Alex, a boy from the forbidden lands outside her community's borders called the Wilds. In a futuristic society in which love is considered a disease, the deadly amor deliria nervosa, Lena has to come to terms with her intense attraction to Alex and what will happen when she has to face her 'procedure' that will cure her forever of strong emotions like love. Lena is also haunted by the memory of her mother, who committed suicide because lost love was too much to handle. Or did she? I found Lena to be a very relatable character, and I really enjoyed reading about her journey and her struggles to defend her right to love Alex. Was she slighlty hysterical at times? Yes. But wouldn't you be if everything you knew and your way of life was turned against you? Wouldn't you be shocked and angry that your mother wasn't really dead, and the people you trusted most to take care of you lied to you your whole life? Lena finds strength at the end of the novel that makes her a refreshing heroine. As for Alex, while I did think that his and Lena's romance was a beautiful and heart breaking tale, I found him almost too perfect. Lena's perception of him proved her intense love, but her constant downing on herself made her seem unappealing. Still, I was rooting for them to escape the entire novel so that they could be together 'without walls' as they both said. And the ending.... Wow, the ending. Could never, in a million years, have seen it coming. A climax to the very end. And an end that brought me to tears. A cliffhanger. I watched the percentage bar on my Kindle and was frantically wondering how she would finish with only 4% left, then 3, then 2. How could it possibly end so quickly? How would they escape? I don't want to give it away completely, but it was heart stopping, tragic, and intense. If Oliver wanted her readers to be clinging onto her story and drooling for a sequel, she succeeded. I cannot say enough about the quality of Lauren Oliver's writing. It was wonderful, it was descriptive, it was so metaphorically perfect. There was no question exactly how Lena was feeling at every point of her journey. There was no doubt in my mind how the town of Portland, Maine looked. It was refreshing and wonderful and rich to read. There were moments of passion. Moments of breathless anticipation. Of shock. Of tears. Delirium peaks your interest, lulls your senses, then wakes them up again in a way that is thrilling. Amazon rated this one of the best books for Kindle, and I agree. Oliver has created a new world that is both believable and heart pounding. Her characters are endearing. The heroes are relatable and wonderful at the right moments, the cured are hatable and feared at the tense twists. I have read that this is the first of a trilogy, and I will be waiting with baited breath for the sequel to Delirium. Its and infectious, wonderful book, one that I would recommend to anyone who wants a good read. But be prepared: when you pick up Delirium, you won't be able to put it down. If love is a disease, then I am infected with love for this book.

I could never imagine a world without love. But, that is exactly what Lauren Oliver has done with Delirium, and she's done it beautifully. I've been wanting to read this book for a while, but I was a little reluctant because I've become quite burnt out with dystopian series--The Hunger Games, Divergent, Legend. But, I decided that I would try one more, and I'm glad that I did. Amid a flood of dystopian novels, Delirium definitely stays afloat. Here are the five reasons why I gave Delirium 4.5 out of 5 stars: ★ REALISTIC PROTAGONIST I really loved Lena's character. She seemed more real to me than any of the other female heroines that exist in dystopian stories today. One characteristic that makes Lena unique is that she actually likes the world she lives in. She's perfectly okay with the idea of never falling in love because that is what she knows. She's never experienced anything different. Katniss didn't look forward to The Hunger Games. Tris didn't look forward to the Choosing Ceremony. But, Lena looks forward to receiving "the cure". As you can guess from the synopsis of this story, Lena does eventually end up falling in love, but she does so quite unwillingly. This is where that age old phrase "you can't help what your heart wants" comes into play. At the start of the story, we see that Lena is not someone who is going to throw her morals and everything she believes in out the window for a hot guy. I was really pleased to find that this book's romance aspect was far from typical. One of my biggest book pet peeves are the love stories where the girl or guy is easily wooed by another girl or guy just because they're good looking. Lena is forced to make tough decisions about whether she will act on her newfound love and what she is going to do about her future. Will she stick to the comfort and routine of the world she knows or will she risk everything and allow Alex to show her more? ★ LENA'S MOTHER I found the relationship Lena had with her mother to be one of the most intriguing aspects of this story. Lena's mother is her ghost, the thing that keeps her from going after what she wants and needs. I don't think it's spoilery to tell you that Lena's mother was sick with deliria nervosa and killed herself when Lena was only a child. You learn that in the first few pages of the story. To readers, when Lena describes her mother, she seems completely normal. But, to Lena, her mother was a freak. There is a beautifully written part of the book where Lena talks about the relationship she had with her mother. They used to sing and dance together, and her mother would kiss her scrapes and bruises when she fell--all things that people who were "cured" of the disease of love would never do. When Lena was young, she enjoyed her mother's comfort and the fun they had dancing in their living room. But, now she realizes that those activities weren't normal. Something about reading how Lena thought her mother was sick and weird really touched my heart. It made me sad for the children who have to grow up in Lena's world, never knowing a mother's love. And, it made me appreciative of my mother and the relationship we share. ★ OLIVER'S WRITING This is the first novel of Lauren Oliver's that I have ever read, and I absolutely love her writing. Her words create such vivid images in your mind. And, they flow beautifully and lyrically, like poetry. I really enjoyed the way Oliver described love, and how she wrote Lena as becoming alive when she experienced love. Here are some of my favorite quotations: "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. Before and after--and during, a moment no bigger or longer than an edge." "Love, the deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don't. But that isn't it, exactly. The condemner and the condemned. The executioner; the blade; the last-minute reprieve; the gasping breath and the rolling sky above you and the thank you, thank, thank you, God. Love: It will kill you and save you, both." If any of that seems complicated, believe me when I say that Oliver's writing is both beautiful and understandable. Once you start reading and get a sense of her voice, you'll know exactly what her words mean. ★ CLIFFHANGER ENDING When the ending of the first novel in a trilogy makes me cry, I know that that author is doing something right. Out of all the series and trilogies I've read--The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices, Harry Potter--none of them have ever made me cry over the first installment. The ending of Delirium was stunning--I was literally stunned. The ending gave me anxiety. There was a point where my heart was pounding and I had to set the book aside for a few minutes. And, then, I was yelling at the book the way you yell at your television. I had to cover the pages with my hands so that my eyes wouldn't flutter forward and spoil the ending. I love cliffhangers, and Delirium provided me with one. It left me with questions, and it prompted me to immediately go to Amazon and buy Pandemonium and Requiem. And, the last sentence, the last few paragraphs--they're all so beautiful. This book's ending just gave me all the feels. I can't even accurately express how it tore my heart to pieces. You have to read it and experience all of the emotion for yourself. ☆ SLOW START I'm taking away half a star for this book because I found it difficult to get into. The beginning was quite slow and lackluster, as Oliver did a lot of world building in that section. I tend to like books where I am hooked from the very beginning and I didn't feel that with this one. There were times when I didn't want to keep reading because I was so bored. But, all the great reviews that I'd read for the book kept me going. Needless to say, I am very glad that I finished Delirium! Eventually,​ the pace picks up, and the story gets better. But, for me that wasn't until sometime after the halfway point of the book. *** I highly recommend this book! I know that many people out there are getting tired of dystopias, and I totally understand how you feel. But, before you jump off the dystopia wagon, I think you should read just one more. Read Delirium, because it's beautiful and it speaks to the most human aspect of all of us: our hearts.

I felt a quiet rage bubbling the entire time I read Delirium. What circumstance occurred where people thought eliminating affection was a good thing? I don't know why this United States alt-universe happened - perhaps the next books in the series explains more history - but I do know I was angry about this lobotomized society. However, the book is a great YA read. The claustrophobic world of Delirium, while irritating, did not stop my interest in finishing the book. Lena, Hana, Alex and Grace, the most appealing characters in the book, are very easy to like. Teenagers Lena and Hana are a delightful pair and best friends. Every time I picked up the book I wanted to learn more about their lives. Despite this dreadful police state they live in, they can squeeze in moments of time for fun and secrets, especially while bike riding or running, and be themselves. Even under the draconian, controlled society they live, where eventually everyone undergoes a brain surgery which appears to be a perfected lobotomy at 18 and all are immediately paired with a selected mate by the government, these lovely high school girls giggle, hope and have fun in the meantime. But they are 17, and soon they will be 'cured'. All of their lives they've been educated to expect the surgery and marriage to a strange man on graduation from school, which they've been taught is a preferred existence than having choices and emotions, particularly the emotion of love. Love leads to a diseased and painful early death - or so they've been told. All of the townspeople, who are living within an electrified fence with armed guards keeping them inside, move with dulled purpose in their daily tasks,without affection for their children or each other. No one hugs, dances or touches, duty and regimentation are the only rhythms expected of people. For those who have yet to have the operation, still possessing emotions, they live in a capsule of constant fear. There is constant scrutiny and judgement; from the time of waking to returning from school to their parents, conformity is enforced. Lena has felt her entire life the suspicion that she cannot be quite all right. She is living with her aunt and cousins because her father was a sympathizer with the 'invalids' - people who escaped their fenced-in community to live in the woods. Her mother, despite being 'cured' three times, somehow still had emotions and a playful nature. Worst of all, Lena's mother loved her. First Lena's father ran away, then her mother committed suicide when slotted in for a fourth operation. Ever since, Lena has been desperate to fit in and to never be found lacking in conformity. Then, one day, an important day because Lena is being evaluated for how well her thinking has been trained to be like everyone else's, she sees a young man - a gloriously handsome 19-year-old man. Although he bears the mark of being cured, he is very different from the mechanized robots most of the adults appear to be. He laughs. Lena is horribly afraid. From The Book of Shhh description, which she has studied all of her life, she thinks she might have caught the disease Love. Romance readers, start your engines now. The author is a champion love story writer. But the book is about more than this, ultimately. This is a Romance with bite. While it moves at a smooth pace and the language is musical, perfect for describing Lena's world and inner life and cares, she is in a well-lit clean neighborhood of darkness. Children must watch out for each other because their parents do not repair any damage incurred emotionally - there are no soothing caresses for painful moments, only a cold dutiful checking for scrapes and injuries. Thankfully, Lena has Hana. Hana is a bit braver and wilder than Lena, but no matter. They have each other's back. There is the silent little girl Grace, also orphaned, with whom Lena shares her bedroom. Without each other, Lena's aunt Carol's home would be a cold-hearted place, full of cured, married adult relatives. Always being watched and every moment calibrated for sameness, yet Hana and Lena find ways to be a little bit like normal teenagers. Hana leads, Lena follows, and soon Lena unexpectly discovers Hana has been living a secret life of music and fun. Between the handsome boy Alex and Hana, Lena learns her world has been nothing but lies. Warning! There is a cliffhanger ending, which means you must read the rest of the series! You cannot stop at reading Delirium, Book 1, but must go on to Book 2, Pandemonium, to find out if this is going to end happily, or turn out to be more like the ending in Romeo and Juliet - definitely I hope not!

Ninety-five days, and all will be well. Lena will have had her procedure, and any trace of the disease, amor deliria nervosa, will be in the past. She will have a new life with whatever man she is matched with, and she will be free of pain, of agony, of loss, of sorrow. She will be free of love, a terrible word that drags people into the depths of their own sickness. She will be free. Then, Alex. The boy from the labs. He has the mark of the procedure, but he's different, somehow. And he knows Lena...has seen her before and wants to be friends. She doesn't know why she says yes to his invitation to meet him. But she does. After, nothing is the same. ________________________________________________ My thoughts -Delirium shook me to the core. No, really, my hands were shaking and my breathing was coming fast. But first, I must rewind to the beginning. At the beginning, within the first ten pages, my jaw dropped. This is quality literature, I told myself, sucking in those pages without delay. The writing. The characters. The atmosphere. Picture yourself sitting, surrounded by the white halls of a hospital. Everything smells clean, sterile, and you can't help but notice the faint echo, as though life, real life, is outside the walls that surround you. Everything looks shiny. Everything is bright. You have a headache. You've had tests done, and now you are waiting. Waiting for the verdict. Waiting for someone, someone in draped in more white, to come and tell you your future. Will you live, or will you die? Your fate rests in his hands. The verdict that will change your life forever is about to be revealed to you. Well, this is what the beginning of this book reminded me of. The waiting, the endless waiting, as though your whole life is just a waiting game. What else is there but what's in front of you? While reading the first fifty pages or so, I was, in fact, reminded of the color of this book's cover. That light turqoise, like a piece of the ocean. But flat and sterile, like in a hospital. And then, as the story progressed (while I continued to drop my jaw in amazement at the beauty of it), I realized that every scene is defined by a color. The party was black, with bright neon of blues, pinks, and oranges. The picnic was golden, like a piece of sunshine. The star scene was navy blue. And throughout every scene, the color turqoise was laced, as though reminding me of the impending danger of the procedure. When I had forty pages left, I sat down and finished the story. My hands shook and I could barely turn the page. I was amazed, pained, scared for what would happen... And then - the end. Oh....I cried. Actually, I sobbed. And I don't throw that word around lightly. There are some books that cause me to shed a few tears, but only a few, a rare few (Sapphique, Inkspell, Jane Eyre, Uncle Tom's Cabin, the three books of the Circle Trilogy, and The Silent Boy, to be specific), cause me to lose it completely. This, my friends, joins that list, my crying list, my epic list. And, mind you, this is coming from the perspective of someone who didn't want to read this book. I wasn't sure about it. I'd heard a lot of good and some bad, and I still didn't have a good feeling about it. Well, I was wrong. Like, really really really wrong... Character notes -Immediately, I cared for Lena. I felt the pain she felt, and I wanted to help her, or at least see her happy. To see her free of the lies of her society. I wanted to comfort her about her mother and be the best friend she needs. She seemed strong to me, despite the sadness she felt. All she needed to do was realize it was all a lie. Only then could she break free. And she needed someone special to help her with that. Someone who would pull her out of her own troubles and show her the world around her for what it truly is - a beautiful world, full of deceived and deceiving people. That person took shape in Alex. Alex seemed...different. Right from the start. Not only does he stand out in that strange world, but he stands out in literature, too. He's not your typical boyfriend, either. When Lena needs someone strong, he is strong. When she needs someone kind, he is kind. He always protects her. He loves her genuinely and selflessly, always thinking of her first, what she loves and wants to do. When Lena begins to fall into a self-pity craze, he's tough with her, but only because he wants her to see the truth - because he loves her. I cannot tell you how stinking impressed I am with his character. The amount of selflessness and care and respect and beauty put into the love he has for Lena surprised me. I was not prepared for this quality of a love story. I have a feeling that my opinion of many love stories I read in the future will be colored by this one, just because it was so incredibly amazing to me. I also love that Alex is the color of autumn. At least, that's what he reminds Lena of, and it's stuck in my brain now, too. His hair is the color of autumn leaves. His eyes are the color of amber. He's just warm and...wonderful. Like, really truly wonderful. Quality. Story notes -This is something else that surprised me: the perfect smoothness of the story. Like, it was incredibly smooth. There were times when I felt the pace could have gone out of whack - but nope!! It went smooth, like Lauren Oliver has never done anything else in her life except write smooth stories. And the story itself... Twists and turns and creepy Crypts and love. Lots of love. It's powerful. NOT your easy, light read that you can put down and say, "Yay that was happy, now let's move on!" When I finished it (during my good, long cry), I had to think. In fact, I don't exactly want to pick up a book right now because I just want to let this one rest a bit on my mind before I dive into another story. One word/phrase to sum up this book (and final thoughts) -There are quite a few words that come to mind when I think of Delirium... Powerful, colorful, LOVELY, quality, coherent...flipping amazing! But I really think the best word (actually, phrase) to describe it is breath-takingly beautiful. When I reached the end of the book, I kind of did lose my breath. There's so much going on, so much to learn about these characters and experience in this deceived world. And there's so much love. So, so much, that it got me thinking about my life. My loves. How do I love those around me? How can I take advantage of this freedom? And the choices I have...it's amazing compared to the world of Delirium. This, I take advantage of too much. What better choices can I make in the future? Really, this was quite a life-changing, thought-provoking book for me. I hope everyone will give this book a shot - literature as quality as this deserves a majorly huge spotlight. :) For the parents: Some brief strong language. (F**k, b**ch, d**n, s**t...) A short scene (less than a page long) where Alex sees Lena without a shirt on (it's implied without a bra as well), and he tells her she is beautiful. They don't have sex but they kiss a lot. Not super descriptive.

Good concept, interesting set up, creative, and some interesting characters. However, it was a "pick up and read" book for me, instead of a "cannot put it down" read. Not awful, but not terrific. A "good" read. My favorite line in the book: "I said that without love, there could also be no hate: without hate, no violence. Hate isn't the most dangerous thing, he'd said. Indifference is." I've long pondered indifference as a greater evil than hatred. To me, this insight felt familiar, and in my opinion it was the best line of the book. Without giving away too much: Things I liked- -There are some poetic elements to the way Oliver writes. -The idea of a world where love is the greatest disease, where it is essentially illegal, is an interesting one. -Towards the end, the action picks up and has a few edge-of-your-seat moments. -There are some truly good ideas and lines in this book-- the kind that are thought provoking and make you wonder, "What if?" -I think the author does a pretty good job of creating the kind of world that one would expect from this specific type of society. -The cover is very nice. On my Kindle, it isn't like what the one pictured here looks like. -Grace... the youngest character, with just a small supporting role, and she doesn't talk. Still, somehow, she was one of the most interesting character of all. I'd love to see her story told. -Hana... who I found had more spunk and interesting character traits than Lena. She'd have made a terrific main character. -Alex... was just right for his purpose in this story. I like how he kept his head, even under pressure, and wish we could have seen much more about him and his world and life than the few tantalizing glimpses that only make you want more. Things I didn't like- -Though poetic, some descriptions are repeated to the extent of eye-rolling... yes, we remember that his hair is the color of leaves in fall, we don't need it repeated every time the character appears. -I get that violent scenes helped set the pace, and I get that violence towards a dog might work for shock value and for showcasing how a world without love would impact our furry friends... but one graphic cruelty to a dog scene is more than enough for me. -The main character is... blah. She sees herself that way, it is important to the story, and repeated quite often just how "average" she is. But she has so little that makes her truly interesting. She's weak, she's afraid, she's naive. She changes, and that's good, and she retains some of her old flaws and fears, and that's good too... but it just felt like something was missing. I had a much clearer picture of the people around Lena, than I did of Lena herself. -Magical shoes? Okay, it was a tiny plot hole in the grand scheme of things, but it did bother me and I found it distracted me during what should have been a very poignant moment in the book. First Lena takes the shoes off, then she has them on, then she picks them up out of the sand. It was a mistake that took away from a chapter that was pretty important. -The format in the Kindle is annoying. Sentences are left hanging, they skip down a line then begin again. It's not very pleasing to the eye, and it makes the reader pause when there is no cause to, interrupting the action, taking you out of the story. -The ending. Ugh. Really? I admit it was something I didn't anticipate, and especially not at the moment that it ended as it did. Then again, I have a very strong feeling that this ending wasn't really the ending it seemed to be. Which brings me to the sneak peek of the next book in the series at the end. I was annoyed by Lena's assumptions, and to be honest, already see where this story is going. I bet there is a "big surprise" at the end, that no reader will be all that surprised by. All in all, an entertaining and decent read, but not strong enough to make me want to buy the other books in the series-- especially when the e-books are over $7 each. I wanted to give it more stars. I wanted to like it more. I wanted to write a nicer review. In the end honesty won out. It's good. It's no "Divergent" or "Hunger Games". I've heard that "Before I Fall" from the same author is a much better story, and I did like her style enough to read more from her--- just not in this series. I've downloaded "Before I Fall" and will give it a shot. =)

Read this and other reviews at [...] Ok, so I don't think I have ever read a dystopian fiction. At least not one that I could remember. Maybe sometime during my school age years. Before, I always felt like I would have a hard time connecting because it's so fantastical. I wanted to give Delirium a try because it came so ridiculously highly recommended, it felt stupid not to. I will never be the same again. I can say, I am so happy to have finished 2012 (which was a pretty great year) with such an amazing book. {{It's so strange how life works: You want something and you wait and 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 up in that moment before things changed.}} Because I don't do any kinds of spoilers, this review will be short. If you read the synopsis, you will get the gist. Love is illegal. At the age of 18, you receive the "cure," at which time you're paired with someone and given your occupation...all that jazz. Lena Haloway is 95 days out from this procedure. She's been waiting her lifetime over this - especially after the "disease" was the death of her mother when Lena was six. And then she met Alex. {{It's strange how I instantly recognize the voice even though I've heard it only once before, for ten minutes, fifteen tops - it's the laughter that runs underneath it, like someone leaning in to let you in on a really good secret in the middle of a really boring class.}} Alex shot his way into my heart literally from the first sentence he was introduced to me. He'll stay at the top of my fav book boys for all time now. It's been a long time since I HAD to stay up to finish a book. But I couldn't stop until I was done with this one. I had to know what was going to happen, and I was scared of the outcome. I can say, it literally left me speechless. And breathless. And then when I finally did go to bed, I opened my Kindle app on my phone and re-read the last couple pages JUST to make sure I hadn't ACTUALLY fallen asleep on the couch and dreamt what I thought I read. Lauren Oliver has the most beautiful prose. I was literally hooked from her first sentence (actually, I was hooked on a quote she gave during an interview on Amazon), so for me, this read just blew me away. As the story got more intense, her writing followed. The characters are so well-developed, the relationships so involved and intriguing and again, the actual prose, is just ridiculous. The way she weaves words is magic. {{Most things, even the greatest moments on earth, have their beginnings in something small.}} This book is a definite 5 star for me, but as is sometimes the case, it doesn't even feel like it can be on the same sort of scale I normally review on. It just rocked me that much. I know it's going to take some serious time to stop thinking about this story...but luckily for me, I was able to IMMEDIATELY download Pandemonium, so by the time this review goes live, I'm certain I'll be deep in the trenches of that. I hope to get some answers that I DESPERATELY need, but I'm sure I'll be left with even more questions. And then, the real task will be before me: waiting until March 5 for the final installment, Requiem. If I have one request from everyone for this year, it would be to PLEASE, step outside your comfort zone (if you don't normally read dystopian), and pick up this book. You WILL not be disappointed. So far from it. INITIAL THOUGHTS WHEN I FINISHED:: OMG. Definitely moving to the top of my all time favs list. Review to come. When I can breathe again. Hopefully sometime in early 2013. OMG.

The simplest way to tell you what I thought of it is to assure you that I'll be reading the sequel. I will be reading it, come hell or high water. The end left me hanging, as the first of a trilogy ought. I also like love stories. I would like to think I am more academic than that, but the truth is that a good love story is, in my opinion, the best of all stories. The trouble is that they're so rare. Good ones, I mean. Delirium is a novel unabashedly about love, and the absence of love, and the consequences of that absence, and what it looks like to find love in a setting otherwise literally devoid of it. And not just romantic love, but the love of a mother for her daughter, the love between sisters and friends... all of it. Lena is a girl who has waited eagerly for the procedure for years, the procedure everyone gets at the age of eighteen that will take away her ability to feel love. She has been looking forward to this because the absence of love will also mean the absence of fear and the absence of pain. She has been looking forward to this because the one thing she wants more than anything is to finally be just like everyone else. What she does not expect is that love will find her before her eighteenth birthday. That she might meet the one person who can show her how ugly, bereft, and oppressive the world she lives in truly is. When she does meet him, the walls she's built around her heart are quickly pulled down, and the question of losing her love for the sake of fitting in becomes absurd. The consequences, however, will mean the end of all she's known. She is willing to take the risk, because she loves. But she may not survive.* Some of the wonderful things about this book: Lauren Oliver has taken a rather extreme plot line and turned it into something plausible, readable, and natural. Nothing about Lena's world seems unlikely. Every outlandish element of this loveless society has its root in something familiar - whether it be our natural fears, our mobbish tendencies, or our insecurities. And the characters are believable, too. Nothing is unreal. It's also a storyline I would have liked to have written, which is to say that it's a world I would like to sit in longer, and these are characters I want to know better. Having said that, I did not at first like Lena much. I did not buy her eagerness for the procedure - and not because the procedure seems so obviously horrible to anyone outside the system. It didn't seem believable because of her character and her history. Oddly enough, as she gradually changed her mind about the procedure, gradually came to realize that the society she had so long supported with all her heart and mind was at its roots corrupt and dehumanizing, I started to believe where she'd come from. In the same on-the-fence sort of way, I loved Lauren Oliver's writing, her very human descriptions, the way she never hesitated to sit in a single, precious observation for as long as it was necessary. I also found myself skimming almost full pages of description that were just a bit more florid or tangential than the present moment of the story called for. In other words, it was occasionally a bit wordy. But it was also beautiful, and personable, and fearful all at the same time. I have high hopes for the next book. And I hope very much that the third will follow fast behind. *Of course she will survive. Who are we kidding.

I don't know why the heck I put off reading this book as long as I did. It's been on my desk for like a month and I guess I was intimidated by the size of it (nearly 450 pages!) and the hype. I didn't want to be disappointed. Well I'm super happy to say that I wasn't! This book is totally worth the hype! When the story starts out, Lena is basically one of society's clones. She believes love--the deliria-- is a disease. She can't wait to get the cure. She's excited and eager. She believes that the government and random house raids are all there for her protection. She's totally wrong. Normally I get frustrated when there's a naive "buy into what society tells you" kind of girl in a book. While I didn't love it in Delirium, at least I understood it. Lena didn't know any better. She grew up being taught that love is a horrible life-ruining thing that needs to be cured. I couldn't really blame her for believing what she was taught. And she does slowly start to come out of her shell and actually see the real world around her, and start dipping her toes into the world of love! I loved how even though Delirium is a futuristic dystopian book, there were so many parts that felt exactly like life today. I mean they still had school, graduation, sleepovers, and other than the whole deliria thing society felt pretty similar. I could totally relate to Lena and her best friend. They did everything together and supported each other, but there were also times when they started finding differences between themselves and drifting apart. It felt like a very realistic relationship! And ohmygod the romance. OH MY GOD! It's forbidden, it's awesome, it's sexy, there's kissing, and then there's more kissing, and late-night-beach outings, and oh my god THE KISSING!!!! I absolutely loved Alex and Lena. Their relationship was so pure and so... I don't know. SQUEE!! I like how there were no stupid petty arguments. At one point I thought I saw one coming on, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it not turn into an argument at all. I hate it in books when the girl is doing something with a different guy that looks bad from the outside, but really there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. But then the other main male just gets pissed off and doesn't listen to her explanation so it all gets blown out of proportion and it's just stupid and petty. There was none of that in Delirium! Alex was totally reasonable and understanding and awesome! And I loved how he was always open, honest, and patient with Lena. Their relationship was just so yummy!!! I enjoyed the first 350 pages, but it was really the last 100 that had me screaming for absolute joy and loving this book with every fiber of my being! Towards the end things get totally intensified! You will not be able to put the book down! I loved how I was never able to guess the ending. There were so many endings that would have made sense that I could never pinpoint what it was going to be. Would Lena get the cure but somehow be resistent to it like her mom was? Would Lena try to take down the government? Would she run away? Would she go into hiding? And how would Alex tie in? Would the ending be happy or sad? I had no idea! And I loved how there were a few things that hit me out of nowhere. Maybe in hindsight they totally make sense and might even be kind of obvious, but in the moment I totally didn't even consider them so it was full of surprises!

ディストピアのラブストリーって感じで面白かったです。 １巻だけで比べれば同じディストピア系の”Matched”のほうが個人的には面白かったですが。 でも、２巻目以降はDeliriumのほうが断然面白かったので、どっちを読もうかなーって迷っていたらこっちをおすすめします。 英語も読みやすいのでおすすめです。 このシリーズは毎回続きがすごーく気になるところで終わるので、Kindleで読むのでなければ一度に3冊購入してから読むことをお勧めします。

***This review may contain spoilers (Of this book and the "Uglies" trilogy)*** It's been a number of years since I read I last read Scott Westerfield's "Uglies" series and over time I have obviously forgotten details here and there, but after reading "Delirium" I feel like a lot of what I forgot about the "Uglies" series is coming back to me. Now you may be thinking, "Huh? How in the world would that happen?" Well because "Delirium" is so entirely similar to the "Uglies" series. Both stories revolve around a Dystopian world where the government is trying to control its people in crazy ways. In the "Uglies" trilogy when someone hits the age of 16 they become "pretty" through ridiculous amounts of plastic surgery and whatnot (and they unknowingly become somewhat dumber/ have their thinking dimmed down in order to keep them like sheep, unable to think for themselves/ unable to rebel against the government). In "Delirium" when someone hits the age of 18 they are "cured", a procedure which makes them unable to contract amor deliria nervosa, better known as love. Their government has entirely convinced then that love is the root of all evil, from love comes jealously, hate, and the likes of and such emotions lead to unrest, death, pretty much everything but the apocalypse (or who knows, they probably do think that love will led to the apocalypse). And then there is the characters. In the "Uglies" series Shay starts to question the world around her and brings to the attention of the main character Tally that all is not as what it appears to be. She begins to opens Tally's eyes up to a whole new world around her and encourages her to partake in illegal activities in which the both of them couple get in major trouble for. In "Delirium" Hana also starts to question the world around her and shows main character Lena that their life has so much more to offer them- like Shay, Hana encourages Lena to partake in illegal activities. Both Tally and Lena cannot wait until the day that they can have their procedures... That is, until they meet a boy... The boys...? Both boys are rebels, they live outside of the world that the government has created, they are "wild', "dangerous" and totally "off-limits". In "Uglies" David in born in the Smoke, the world outside of the government created world, from rebel parents- those who fled from the controlled world. He has is still an "ugly" as he never had the procedure to make him "pretty". Alex in "Delirium" was also born in the world outside of the government created one- the Wild, to parents who had fled from said government created world. He also has never underwent his procedure- the procedure to cure him from love. Both boys stand for everything that the governments hate and fear. As for the differences between the two books? Well, they exist, but in my opinion the similarities far outweigh them. That being said, I do think that many people will enjoy "Delirium"- though I am sure that there are some hardcore "Uglies" fans out there who will be shaking their fists at Lauren yelling "You completely copied Scott's book!" Thankfully, I am not one of those people. I can read countless vampire/ werewolf/ witch/ whatever stories whose plot lines have been overplayed again and again and never get sick of them. But what I wonder (and I don't mean this in a mean way whatsoever I am honestly just curious) is what is Lauren Oliver's opinion in this whole matter? Had she read the "Uglies" trilogy prior to penning this novel? Was she aware that her book seems entirely reminiscent of the "Uglies" trilogy? When all is said and done I much say that overall I prefer the characters of "Delirium's" over "Uglies". I feel like Alex's personality was a gazillion more-there than David's was. And I couldn't stand Shay whatsoever in the "Uglies" trilogy (I'd say that if I had to pick one turn-off from that series, it'd be her), but I really liked Hana. I think that "Delirium" is a lot softer of a book and that those who love romance will love this book...

Me encantó! Llego súper rapido, cuidado y muy buena historia

Bons points : c'est une série donc si on a aimé le premier, l'histoire perdura, tout comme le plaisir. L'histoire est intéressante, et fait du bien. Bien-sûr il y a une histoire d'amour, ce qui est tout l'intérêt de l'histoire car c'est interdit. Pourtant ce n'est pas une autre histoire de Roméo et Juliette. Rassurez-vous : je n'ai rien spoilé! Le petit point négatif est le format, c'est un livre épais, écrit petit ce qui fait paraitre les chapitres très longs. En lisant on se fatigue vite ce qui peut être agaçant car l'histoire est captivant, on veut en savoir plus, mais on se fatigue.

Inhalt: Die U.S.A. in der Zukunft: Die Landesgrenzen wurden geschlossen und es herrscht ein totalitäres System. Das Leben soll kontrolliert ablaufen. Der Feind von Kontrolle ist die Emotion und so wurde Liebe als gefährliche Krankheit (amor deliria nervosa) eingestuft. Der Staat hat eine Heilung für die Krankheit gefunden. Nun werden alle 18jährigen geheilt, so dass sie anschließend ein sorgenfreies und geregeltes Leben führen können. Sie sind zu keinen großen Gefühlen mehr fähig. Diejenigen, die aus diesem System ausbrechen wollen, werden hart bestraft. Lena steht kurz vor ihrer Heilung. Sie freut sich schon darauf, da ihr die Liebe wirklich Angst macht. Von allen Seiten wird ihr gelehrt, wie gefährlich es ist die Kontrolle zu verlieren. Außerdem ist ihre Mutter an der Krankheit gestorben. Sie konnte nicht geheilt werden und hat sich aus lauter liebesbedingtem Wahnsinn das Leben genommen. Als Lena Alex kennenlernt, denkt sie sich erst nicht viel dabei, da er bereits geheilt wurde und sie daher nicht infizieren kann. Doch dann stellt sich heraus, dass Alex eigentlich ein Rebell ist und nie geheilt wurde. Er zeigt Lena eine ganz andere Welt. Lena beginnt nachzudenken und ist plötzlich gar nicht mehr so sicher, ob die Liebe denn tatsächlich eine gefährliche Krankheit ist. Und als sie dann selbst infiziert wird, ist sie bereit für dieses Gefühl zu kämpfen und eher zu sterben als geheilt zu werden. Meine Meinung: Wow! Ich liebe dieses Buch. Es ist so wunderschön geschrieben. Schon allein die Grundidee hat mich fasziniert: Liebe als Krankheit. Kann man es denn nicht wirklich so sehen? Wenn man die im Buch beschriebenen Symptome liest, dann kann man schon sagen, dass es sich um eine Krankheit handelt. Hat sich nicht jeder schon einmal gewünscht, dass es eine Heilung für die Liebe gäbe? Würde es uns vielleicht wirklich besser gehen, wenn wir diese Achterbahnfahrt nicht mehr mitmachen müssten? Doch was wäre andererseits noch lebenswert am Leben, wenn wir zu keinen Gefühlen mehr fähig wären? Wollen wir wirklich von einem Staat gelenkt werden und keine eigenen Entscheidungen mehr treffen? Ist es besser den leichten Weg zu gehen, als für das einzutreten, was man für richtig hält? Und das ist so toll an diesem Buch: Man wird zum Nachdenken angeregt. Ich konnte mich gut in Lena hineinversetzen. Zu Beginn fürchtet sie die Liebe und freut sich schon auf ihre Heilung. Das ist verständlich, da sie ja nichts anderes kennt. Sie kommt gar nicht auf die Idee, dass das was ihr von der Gesellschaft präsentiert wird, eine Lüge sein könnte. Umso schöner ist ihre Entwicklung zu einem freidenkenden Menschen. Aus der Furcht wird Neugier und irgendwann wendet sie sich gegen alles, was sie ihr ganzes bisheriges Leben lang für richtig hielt. Dieses Buch packt einen. Es ist nachdenklich, es ist gefühlvoll, es ist tragisch, es macht Mut und es wurde von jemandem geschrieben, der mit Worten umgehen kann. Es ist eines dieser Bücher, die bei einem bleiben, selbst wenn man sie zu Ende gelesen hat. Eine absolute Kaufempfehlung.