Review ][ Delirium

Title ][ Delirium 

Author ][ Lauren Oliver

Chapters (Summary) ][ link

Rating ][ 

When I turned the last page of this book, my first reaction was "... what?". I know a lot of people loved it, but I'll try to explain as well as I can, without giving away any spoilers, why it didn't work for me.  If you really want to be surprised by it, just skip the next paragraph.

One of the main characters died (well, I thought they did but apparently it was left open-ended; I'm going to go on as if this character died), but it seemed really pointless to me. It seemed like they didn't have to die, and when they did, I didn't really care. When they died, I realized that I didn't know them as well as I thought I did and wished I'd known and cared about them more before the author killed them off. Sure, they were amazing and sweet and totally worth falling in love with, but we didn't really know any of their hobbies or little idiosyncrasies that really made them them. I feel like a much better ending would have been the death of the other main character (who we knew better and cared more about), or one of them dieing to save the other out of love, or both dieing in a Romeo and Juliet-type ending. Maybe I just missed the whole point, but the ending seemed weird and pointless to me.

However, if they didn't die the ending would be much better. Also, if both main characters died, it would be nigh impossible to continue the series.

That said, the rest of this book is phenomenal! The whole idea of a society where love is seen as a disease and can be stopped with an operation is intriguing. I loved all the little details Oliver adds because it really makes you consider what our world would be like without love beyond the obvious things like... well... no one would be in love. The romance in it was also really sweet, and since the characters took a long time to fall in love and get to know each other, it was believable. I also adored the snippets of information at the beginning of each chapter from government websites and text books. It gave the whole book a sense of reality.

Why four kernels? The book was amazing, and I couldn't put it down, but the ending really threw me off and I'm not sure if I'd read the second book. It's not that I don't want to read it because I think it would be bad, but I feel as if the first book wraps up fairly well and I also think I can fill in the missing information myself. I didn't even know it was part of a series until today, and I was okay with that.

Now I feel as if I'm missing something because practically everyone else gave it 5 stars, but that is my honest opinion.  

][ Midelaye