Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication Date: Feb. 1, 2011
Pages: 305
Source: For Review from NetGalley (Thank You!)
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars - Super Crazy Awesome!
Description: Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn’t understand that once love - the deliria - blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the governments demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Haloway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy. But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable: She falls in love.

In short: I loved Delirium by Lauren Oliver so much I'm afraid the regulators are going to find me and hand me in to be cured.

Oh, wow, did I love this book. Lauren Oliver has created a superb and horrifying dystopian world in Delirium. Lena is a shy, "in-between" seventeen year old girl who always does as she's told and never lies. She's afraid of everyone and everything ("I'm right to be scared," she says). She looks forward to receiving the cure to amor deliria nervosa on her eighteenth birthday. She believes she will be reborn, healed, and perfect with the cure. She views her mother, who was unable to be cured, as "freakish."

But there's a stubborn part to Lena that keeps nagging at her; a part that tells the examiners that her favourite colour is grey (instead of the more accepted blue or green). Then she meets Alex, a fun-loving older boy, and a sequence of events unfolds that leads to her disobeying and lying to her aunt for the first time. She finds that even the smallest disobedience thrills her. She is able to find courage within herself that she never knew she had. Lena's character development was excellent. I really enjoyed being able to see her grow as the novel progressed. I look forward to getting to know her even better in the sequel.

This was my first experience with Oliver's writing and I can't say enough good things about it. The writing flowed so nicely; I read without pause or distraction. The imagery used was powerful.  I definitely plan on checking out Oliver's debut novel, Before I Fall. Each chapter was prefaced with a quote from a piece of literature from the dystopian society. These were essentially propaganda, brainwashing the readers into believing that love is a disease that needs to be cured. They set the tone perfectly for the novel, showcasing a creepy and appalling world.

My only complaint is that cliffhanger ending! And now we have to wait until 2012 for the sequel, Pandemonium. I will definitely be buying this book when it comes out on February 1st and I highly recommend that you do, too!

Other Reviews:
Brush Up On Your Reading
Call Me Crazy
The Slowest Bookworm

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There was one thing that I noticed while reading Delirium that I feel like I need to bring up, as silly as it is, because I'm weird like that. There were four separate times that Oliver used the imagery of buildings looking like teeth. What is the significance of this? Probably nothing. Just something I noticed...

"a string of bright white buildings, glistening like teeth over the slurping mouth of the ocean." -p. 18
"Beyond those is the familiar string of white square buildings, like giant teeth." -p. 48
"Across the fields I see low, dark silhouettes of barns and silos, some of them brand-new, some barely standing, clinging to the earth like teeth digging into something." -p. 91

 "...all the buildings cut sharply against the sky like a series of metal teeth." -p. 129

This is pretty much the only advantage of being such a slow reader. I notice things like this that no one else cares about. Yay me.

*The Letter D in the A-Z Reading Challenge