Delirium is your typical teen romance/adventure novel.

Two teenagers fall in love and

rebel against an oppressing government, challenging themselves and discovering who
they are and how much they love each other. Seemingly as I enjoyed the Hunger Games
trilogy and the Divergent series, this book has taken a permanent spot on my bookshelf.

Delirium starts of by following the life of an uncertain, law-abiding, shallow teenager

under the name Lena. Being told her parents died in a car crash, Lena lives with her uncle
and aunt in the city of Portland, Oregon. The oppressing government rules everything and
everyone, making people believe that love is a disease and people can only be saved by
the cure, that civilians undergo when they are 18. The cure turns people into
brainwashed robots, showing no emotion whatsoever. The person you get married to gets
picked by the government, and the people must undergo and evaluation to see who is
your match. One day, Lena sees a boy. She swears she sees him winking at her, and for
the following days she cant get him out of her head. Whilst running with her friend she
meets him again and finds out that his name is Alex, and also that he is cured. She thinks
its safe for her to hang out with him. Or is it? Lena attends a forbidden party with
Hana, and during the party there is a raid of the regulators (the police) and Alex helps
Lena escape from the house, but not without being grazed by a dog. When Alex is tying
up Lena, he takes off his shirt, which got Lenas head spinning right round. He then
confesses he is not cured and apparently is an Invalid (people escaping the government
and living outside of the boundaries, free). Lena is desperate to see where Alex lives, so
he takes her to his home with the invalids. He reads poetry to her (which is forbidden),
watch the stars together (which is also forbidden) and lie down next to each other in a
bed (SO FORBIDDEN OH MY GOODNESS). After finding out Lenas match, an ugly,
rude geek under the name Brian Scharff, she decides to escape to the Invalids with Alex.
During their escape plan they get chased by regulators in helicopters and they barely
makes it to the fence. Lena climbs over the fence, but Alex was taken by the regulators.
He mouths to her Run. And so she runs (straight into the next sequel ta-da who knew).

The thing that I loved most about this book was the way the author described the
irrational fear of the government for Deliria Nervosa (the disease of love). She manages
to put it in a certain way so shes not promoting nor discouraging it. She is completely
subjective to this matter. Any third party outsider can see that this fear is totally
unreasonable and illogical. I find it hilarious how the ludicrousness of the government
brainwashes practically everyone, its just unimaginable. I also think the Safety, Health,
and Happiness Handbook, or The Book of Shhh, is funny. Everyone reads it like its a
bible, with everything about the feared disease and the symptoms and what not.

Instead people back then named other diseasesstress, heart disease, anxiety,
depression, hypertension, insomnia, bipolar disordernever realizing that these were, in

fact, only symptoms that in the majority of cases could be traced back to the effects of
amor Deliria Nervosa.

The only thing that I think the author could have done better was the pacing of the story. I
am aware of the fact that this is indeed a trilogy, but the first book was stretched over
such a long period of time, I found myself getting distracted easily whilst reading. The
sometimes overly-descriptive passages bored me and made me want to skip a few pages.

The buildings have fallen away behind me, giving way to ramshackle sheds, sparsely
situated on either side of the cracked and run-down road. Beyond that, a short strip of
tall, weedy grass slants down toward the cove. The water is an enormous mirror, tipped
with pink and gold from the sky. In that single, blazing moment as I come around the
bend, the suncurved over the dip of the horizon like a solid gold archwaylets out its
final winking rays of light, shattering the darkness of the water, turning everything white
for a fraction of a second, and then falls away, sinking, dragging the pink and the red and
the purple out of the sky with it, all the color bleeding away instantly and leaving only
dark.

Although the description is very beautiful, I kind of want to know if they both make it
across the fence.

As I said at the beginning, I really like this dystopian/teen romance/rebellion against
government genre. Series and books like the Hunger Games, Divergent, and Matched
have basically the same general story line and morals.

Overall, I give this book a 9/10. I recommend this book to teenagers (mostly girls, I dont
think boys want to read about how deep is eyes are or the way he stretches in the
morning, but if you do Im not judging.) The book is very relatable and the vocabulary
used is not that complicated, making it an easy and fun read.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS | January 30, 2012 | Trade
Paperworks!

About Details!
They say that the cure for Love will make me happy and safe forever.
And I've always believed them. Until now. Now everything has
changed. Now, I''d rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of
a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.!

$11.95