Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

After getting Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall for Christmas, I began following her blog. Which led to learning about her new book Delirium.

So when I got the chance to get a free ARC of the book (for reasons that I won't mention) I wasn't going to say no, even if it was only a few days before the book actually came out.

I got Delirium on a few weeks ago Friday night and I was done with it by 1 o'clock on Saturday.  [PS - I did sleep for a few hours in the middle of reading but that was only because it got to the point where I had to reread sentences 3 times before they made sense.]

This book was AMAZING.

It takes place in future USA where things are... different. Love is no longer a happy ending to a fairytale. It wasn't something that people longed for and searched for their entire life.

Instead, love became something that people feared. Imagine a world where love is a disease, people who are in love are said to be "infected," and these people can be killed just for giving someone an innocent kiss. Romeo and Juliet is seen as a story that reinforces why love is so horrible rather than a brilliant love story.

Pretty scary. Which is why Lena Haloway can't wait until she turns 18 and she gets the operation that will cure her from love. After her operation, she will be matched with someone who the government thinks is equal to her in status. It's kind of like match.com took over the world and has ordered that everybody be matched by them no matter what.

Of course, right when Lena is about to get her operation when, well, as quoted from the back cover of my ARC: "Lena does the unthinkable: she falls in love."

As though that isn't complicated enough... well, I don't want to give away any more of the plot. But now I shall tell you how amazing this book was.

My favorite part was also probably the scariest part. There are arguements that Lena uses that almost made me believe that love is a disease. She talks about how in Romeo and Juliet they died because of love. She says that stress, heart attacks, and other diseases like that are all love's fault but we've given them other names. I am such a romantic, but there were certain lines that had me doubting true love.

But Lauren Oliver didn't let me doubt love for that long because she showed us Lena's blooming love with a certain boy that will go unnamed. They are so adorable and I love their relationship.

And the ending... oh, the ending. The ending was one of the most unexpected endings I've read in a while. It wasn't the classic ending, and while that can be a little unsettling, it was perfect for the novel. It worked perfectly.

Plus, the characters. Wow, the characters. Just read it.

I've heard some people complain that she didn't do a very good job with worldbuilding. I agree to an extent. Some of the aspects of this world were unclear and I feel like she needed to incorporate more of the history of this place into the novel so that we understood. But I was so involved in the characters and the plot for so much of it that I didn't even notice.

So do I recommend this book? Definitely. Get out there (don't care if you're snowed in) and buy it. And then come back and tell me what you think.

If you haven't read the book and don't plan on it, please tell me what your opinion on endings that don't follow the fairytale plotline.