Friday, August 17, 2012

Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Hardcover, Special Edition, 441 pages
Published August 2nd 2011 by HarperCollins (first published January 1st 2011)

Delirium (Delirium, #1)
Ninety-five days, and then I’ll be safe.

I wonder whether the procedure will hurt.

I want to get it over with.

It’s hard to be patient.

It’s hard not to be afraid while I’m still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn’t touched me yet.

Still, I worry.

They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness.

The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t.
(provided by GoodReads)

Delirium is set in a dystopian world where love is regarded as a disease, amor deliria nervosa. Regarded and feared as the most dangerous disease, they have developed a cure and it is compulsory at age 18. Lena, our heroine, actually is happy about this predicament (as seen above).

I feel like giving away anymore of the story would be disservice to anyone simply wanting to know if this was not a good book. Therefore, this is a not a good book. This is an amazing book. Lena's development as a character was real and honest. Everything she felt, I felt.

For your enjoyment, an anecdote: I woke rather early in the morning considering I was up late reading the night before, and turned over to my night stand to finish the last 40-50 pages of the novel. Quickly, I zipped through the climax, falling action, resolution, afterword, interview with the author, and even the beginning to the next book (all provided in the book). But it wasn't enough; I was not okay. I needed more. I spent the rest of the morning pacing. What was awful was that I was more upset about this book than the fact I was attending my grandmother's funeral at noon. I felt terrible. I still feel terrible, but that won't change that while I was practicing the reading I was to do during mass (mome raths can be Catholic, but not necessarily am I), I could not focus. One second I'm reading aloud from the Book of Wisdom and the next I'm yelling "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME LAUREN OLIVER."

I did manage to get a hold of  myself. Eventually. The point, though, is that I thoroughly loved this book. The world is built well, the prose was fluid, and the story enraptured me.

Final Thought: 36 out of 37 toadstools
Minus one toadstool for breaking my heart.

Review also available on GoodReads

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