Thursday 8 December 2011

Review: Delirium



 Title: Delirium
Author: Lauren Oliver
Series: Delirium #1
Genre: YA, Dystopian
Age restriction? None
Published: 1 February 2011
Recommended for:
Buy: Delirium: The Special Edition @ Amazon


Great YA Dystopian with a few minor flaws. A stellar idea executed very well overall.


Lena Holoway is counting the days until she can have her operation and be free of the curse of love forever. Unlike many of her peers, she doesn't resent the government's interference in her life - she welcomes it, counts the days until it can happen. Because love is dangerous. Love hurts. And love kills. Lena knows this first-hand - that's the reason she's living with her aunt and her two cousins.

Desperate to escape the "curse" her family must bear, the increased scrutiny, the whispers of them being sympathizers, eager to just be normal and happy and free, Lena doesn't even consider that things could be, (should be?), different. Until the day of her evaluations to determine her future partner and life course, when the Sympathizers stage a protest. When she meets him, and her entire life and everything she thought she knew gets turned upside down.

Well-written and captivating, Lauren Oliver's Delirium is a gentle look at identity, feelings and duty as well as being a decent love story and a terrifying glimpse into what might be.


One of the things I particularly enjoyed about Delirium was how every symptom, every justification given for the outlawing of love is made to make absolute sense. I mean, it's true: love is dangerous. Love has caused people to kill themselves and others. Love has driven people insane, it's shattered nations and leveled empires. It's irrational, unexplainable and uncontrollable. And yes, it freaking hurts! It hurts a lot, sometimes.

The only major problems I had with Delirium was that the romance between Alex and Lena seemed a little bit too "pat" and easy and the Authorities of this Dystopian world seem slightly incompetent and useless. I mean, if you're going to have a totalitarian government that wants to control people up to and including what they feel, you'd need to be stricter and it wouldn't be so easy to sneak out after curfew and so on.

Still, all in all this was an excellent and satisfying read with a memorable (albeit cliffhanger!) ending.


RECOMMENDED FOR: Lovers of YA and anyone with any interest in dystopian fiction.

1 comment:

  1. There was a lot about Delirium that was promising. The whole premise of love being eradicated, of it being called a disease is fascinating. The people who are cured are loveless. Never displaying too much affection, living their lives with a partner they're matched with, never singing, or anything. Everything you loved becomes nothing. It means nothing. Something you might have loved before becomes meaning- less. Someone you might have loved before becomes meaningless. "I love you." is never heard, never whispered. Lena never wanted to fall in love. In fact, she counted down the days until she was to be cured. To me, this is a little weird because her mother was not cured. Her mother let her have a taste of the life people had before. But Lena is stickler for the rules. Always worrying about getting in trouble, until she meets Alex. That's how it always happens, right? Thus starts the true downfall. He's liked her from the start, he's bad for her, he's even kinda stalked her, all of this is vaguely familiar. I wasn't even a fourth of the way through when I noticed I was skimming. Skimming, for heavens sake! When you enjoy a book you do not skim. I honestly forced myself through this book up until the end. I got a taste of what I wanted out of Delirium.

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