Delirium By Lauren Oliver

Ninety-five days, and all will be well. Lena will have had her procedure, and any trace of the disease, amor deliria nervosa, will be in the past. She will have a new life with whatever man she is matched with, and she will be free of pain, of agony, of loss, of sorrow. She will be free of love, a terrible word that drags people into the depths of their own sickness.
She will be free.
Then, Alex. The boy from the labs. He has the mark of the procedure, but he’s different, somehow. And he knows Lena…has seen her before and wants to be friends.
She doesn’t know why she says yes to his invitation to meet him. But she does.
After, nothing is the same.
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My thoughts -Delirium shook me to the core. No, really, my hands were shaking and my breathing was coming fast.
But first, I must rewind to the beginning. At the beginning, within the first ten pages, my jaw dropped. This is quality literature, I told myself, sucking in those pages without delay. The writing. The characters.
The atmosphere.
Picture yourself sitting, surrounded by the white halls of a hospital. Everything smells clean, sterile, and you can’t help but notice the faint echo, as though life, real life, is outside the walls that surround you. Everything looks shiny. Everything is bright. You have a headache. You’ve had tests done, and now you are waiting. Waiting for the verdict. Waiting for someone, someone in draped in more white, to come and tell you your future. Will you live, or will you die? Your fate rests in his hands. The verdict that will change your life forever is about to be revealed to you.

Well, this is what the beginning of this book reminded me of. The waiting, the endless waiting, as though your whole life is just a waiting game. What else is there but what’s in front of you?

While reading the first fifty pages or so, I was, in fact, reminded of the color of this book’s cover. That light turqoise, like a piece of the ocean. But flat and sterile, like in a hospital. And then, as the story progressed (while I continued to drop my jaw in amazement at the beauty of it), I realized that every scene is defined by a color. The party was black, with bright neon of blues, pinks, and oranges. The picnic was golden, like a piece of sunshine. The star scene was navy blue. And throughout every scene, the color turqoise was laced, as though reminding me of the impending danger of the procedure.

When I had forty pages left, I sat down and finished the story. My hands shook and I could barely turn the page. I was amazed, pained, scared for what would happen… And then – the end. Oh….I cried. Actually, I sobbed. And I don’t throw that word around lightly. There are some books that cause me to shed a few tears, but only a few, a rare few (Sapphique, Inkspell, Jane Eyre, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the three books of the Circle Trilogy, and The Silent Boy, to be specific), cause me to lose it completely. This, my friends, joins that list, my crying list, my epic list.

And, mind you, this is coming from the perspective of someone who didn’t want to read this book. I wasn’t sure about it. I’d heard a lot of good and some bad, and I still didn’t have a good feeling about it. Well, I was wrong. Like, really really really wrong…

Character notes -Immediately, I cared for Lena. I felt the pain she felt, and I wanted to help her, or at least see her happy. To see her free of the lies of her society. I wanted to comfort her about her mother and be the best friend she needs. She seemed strong to me, despite the sadness she felt. All she needed to do was realize it was all a lie. Only then could she break free.
And she needed someone special to help her with that. Someone who would pull her out of her own troubles and show her the world around her for what it truly is – a beautiful world, full of deceived and deceiving people. That person took shape in Alex.

Alex seemed…different. Right from the start. Not only does he stand out in that strange world, but he stands out in literature, too. He’s not your typical boyfriend, either. When Lena needs someone strong, he is strong. When she needs someone kind, he is kind. He always protects her. He loves her genuinely and selflessly, always thinking of her first, what she loves and wants to do. When Lena begins to fall into a self-pity craze, he’s tough with her, but only because he wants her to see the truth – because he loves her. I cannot tell you how stinking impressed I am with his character. The amount of selflessness and care and respect and beauty put into the love he has for Lena surprised me. I was not prepared for this quality of a love story. I have a feeling that my opinion of many love stories I read in the future will be colored by this one, just because it was so incredibly amazing to me. I also love that Alex is the color of autumn. At least, that’s what he reminds Lena of, and it’s stuck in my brain now, too. His hair is the color of autumn leaves. His eyes are the color of amber. He’s just warm and…wonderful. Like, really truly wonderful. Quality.

Story notes -This is something else that surprised me: the perfect smoothness of the story. Like, it was incredibly smooth. There were times when I felt the pace could have gone out of whack – but nope!! It went smooth, like Lauren Oliver has never done anything else in her life except write smooth stories. And the story itself… Twists and turns and creepy Crypts and love. Lots of love. It’s powerful. NOT your easy, light read that you can put down and say, “Yay that was happy, now let’s move on!” When I finished it (during my good, long cry), I had to think. In fact, I don’t exactly want to pick up a book right now because I just want to let this one rest a bit on my mind before I dive into another story.

One word/phrase to sum up this book (and final thoughts) -There are quite a few words that come to mind when I think of Delirium… Powerful, colorful, LOVELY, quality, coherent…flipping amazing! But I really think the best word (actually, phrase) to describe it is breath-takingly beautiful. When I reached the end of the book, I kind of did lose my breath. There’s so much going on, so much to learn about these characters and experience in this deceived world. And there’s so much love. So, so much, that it got me thinking about my life. My loves. How do I love those around me? How can I take advantage of this freedom? And the choices I have…it’s amazing compared to the world of Delirium. This, I take advantage of too much. What better choices can I make in the future? Really, this was quite a life-changing, thought-provoking book for me. I hope everyone will give this book a shot – literature as quality as this deserves a majorly huge spotlight. 🙂

For the parents: Some brief strong language. (F**k, b**ch, d**n, s**t…) A short scene (less than a page long) where Alex sees Lena without a shirt on (it’s implied without a bra as well), and he tells her she is beautiful. They don’t have sex but they kiss a lot. Not super descriptive.

Me encantó! Llego súper rapido, cuidado y muy buena historia

I could never imagine a world without love. But, that is exactly what Lauren Oliver has done with Delirium, and she’s done it beautifully.

I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while, but I was a little reluctant because I’ve become quite burnt out with dystopian series–The Hunger Games, Divergent, Legend. But, I decided that I would try one more, and I’m glad that I did.

Amid a flood of dystopian novels, Delirium definitely stays afloat.

Here are the five reasons why I gave Delirium 4.5 out of 5 stars:

★ REALISTIC PROTAGONIST
I really loved Lena’s character. She seemed more real to me than any of the other female heroines that exist in dystopian stories today.

One characteristic that makes Lena unique is that she actually likes the world she lives in. She’s perfectly okay with the idea of never falling in love because that is what she knows. She’s never experienced anything different. Katniss didn’t look forward to The Hunger Games. Tris didn’t look forward to the Choosing Ceremony. But, Lena looks forward to receiving “the cure”.

As you can guess from the synopsis of this story, Lena does eventually end up falling in love, but she does so quite unwillingly. This is where that age old phrase “you can’t help what your heart wants” comes into play. At the start of the story, we see that Lena is not someone who is going to throw her morals and everything she believes in out the window for a hot guy. I was really pleased to find that this book’s romance aspect was far from typical. One of my biggest book pet peeves are the love stories where the girl or guy is easily wooed by another girl or guy just because they’re good looking.

Lena is forced to make tough decisions about whether she will act on her newfound love and what she is going to do about her future. Will she stick to the comfort and routine of the world she knows or will she risk everything and allow Alex to show her more?

★ LENA’S MOTHER
I found the relationship Lena had with her mother to be one of the most intriguing aspects of this story. Lena’s mother is her ghost, the thing that keeps her from going after what she wants and needs.

I don’t think it’s spoilery to tell you that Lena’s mother was sick with deliria nervosa and killed herself when Lena was only a child. You learn that in the first few pages of the story.

To readers, when Lena describes her mother, she seems completely normal. But, to Lena, her mother was a freak.

There is a beautifully written part of the book where Lena talks about the relationship she had with her mother. They used to sing and dance together, and her mother would kiss her scrapes and bruises when she fell–all things that people who were “cured” of the disease of love would never do. When Lena was young, she enjoyed her mother’s comfort and the fun they had dancing in their living room. But, now she realizes that those activities weren’t normal.

Something about reading how Lena thought her mother was sick and weird really touched my heart. It made me sad for the children who have to grow up in Lena’s world, never knowing a mother’s love. And, it made me appreciative of my mother and the relationship we share.

★ OLIVER’S WRITING
This is the first novel of Lauren Oliver’s that I have ever read, and I absolutely love her writing. Her words create such vivid images in your mind. And, they flow beautifully and lyrically, like poetry.

I really enjoyed the way Oliver described love, and how she wrote Lena as becoming alive when she experienced love. Here are some of my favorite quotations:

“Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That’s what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side. Before and after–and during, a moment no bigger or longer than an edge.”

“Love, the deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t. But that isn’t it, exactly. The condemner and the condemned. The executioner; the blade; the last-minute reprieve; the gasping breath and the rolling sky above you and the thank you, thank, thank you, God. Love: It will kill you and save you, both.”

If any of that seems complicated, believe me when I say that Oliver’s writing is both beautiful and understandable. Once you start reading and get a sense of her voice, you’ll know exactly what her words mean.

★ CLIFFHANGER ENDING
When the ending of the first novel in a trilogy makes me cry, I know that that author is doing something right. Out of all the series and trilogies I’ve read–The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Mortal Instruments, The Infernal Devices, Harry Potter–none of them have ever made me cry over the first installment.

The ending of Delirium was stunning–I was literally stunned. The ending gave me anxiety. There was a point where my heart was pounding and I had to set the book aside for a few minutes. And, then, I was yelling at the book the way you yell at your television. I had to cover the pages with my hands so that my eyes wouldn’t flutter forward and spoil the ending.

I love cliffhangers, and Delirium provided me with one. It left me with questions, and it prompted me to immediately go to Amazon and buy Pandemonium and Requiem.

And, the last sentence, the last few paragraphs–they’re all so beautiful. This book’s ending just gave me all the feels. I can’t even accurately express how it tore my heart to pieces.

You have to read it and experience all of the emotion for yourself.

☆ SLOW START
I’m taking away half a star for this book because I found it difficult to get into. The beginning was quite slow and lackluster, as Oliver did a lot of world building in that section.

I tend to like books where I am hooked from the very beginning and I didn’t feel that with this one. There were times when I didn’t want to keep reading because I was so bored. But, all the great reviews that I’d read for the book kept me going. Needless to say, I am very glad that I finished Delirium! Eventually,​ the pace picks up, and the story gets better. But, for me that wasn’t until sometime after the halfway point of the book.

***

I highly recommend this book! I know that many people out there are getting tired of dystopias, and I totally understand how you feel. But, before you jump off the dystopia wagon, I think you should read just one more. Read Delirium, because it’s beautiful and it speaks to the most human aspect of all of us: our hearts.