Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Ninety-five days, and then I'll be safe. I wonder whether the procedure will hurt/ I want to get it over with. It's hard to be patient. It's hard not to be afraid while I'm still uncured, though so far the deliria hasn't touched me yet. Still, I worry. They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness. The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don't.

My Thoughts:
It's been days since I've read this book and I can't seem to put into words how utterly fantastic it was. When I was first told to read the book, I must admit, I had no desire to do so. I thought it would be like 'Uglies' - A book I just could not stand.

So imagine this, you're having a particularly hard day and you wonder across a bookstore so you take a venture inside but nothing is grabbing your attention, until out of the corner of your eye you see a beautiful spine hidden underneath a hardback copy of a religious satire book. Long story short, I picked up the book, saw it was Delirium, thought it was fate, so I bought the book.

It wasn't long before I decided to actually read the book and after that, it was only a few hours until I finished it.

In the world of Delirium, love is slowly being eradicated. Once every teenager reaches the age of 18 they are forced to undergo a procedure that will cure them of the amor deliria nervosa - Translation: love. At the end of this procedure they are unable to feel any sort of emotion that would mean they are connected to something: love, longing, hope, happiness. Oliver describes scenes of absolute horror to accentuate the tragedy of what has happened to this society, we see people turn their backs on abused pets and hear stories of mothers abandoning their children.

The main character, Lena, has waited all of her life to have the procedure, she can't wait to be safe from the disease that is plaguing the USA. Throughout the book you see Lena slowly learning that it isn't a bad thing to love and be loved but rather that the latter is far worse. The character development in Delirium is phenomenal and as a reader who would rather have strong protagonists than perfect world-building I was very impressed with both the main characters and the side characters.

Lauren Oliver's writing is absolutely beautiful, it's both haunting and mesmerising and you catch yourself reading her words over and over again. There are some books you read that can almost seem poetic with the way the words flow and feel, it's a unique and rare trait to find in a Young Adult author, admittedly, but Lauren Oliver possesses it and you find her quotes repeating in your head even hours after you've read them: "The wind whispers Alex's name and the ocean repeats it"

Delirium is eye-opening, beautiful and heartbreaking all at the same time and I could not be more happy with the story as a whole*. Overall I give the story 5 stars because it made me smile, gasp, cry and stare at the pages with disbelief on numerous occasions and that's all I ask for within a book.

* Although if you've read it, then you probably understand the heartbreaking part of this sentence and you know that there is one tiny (huge) part of the story that could be changed, right?

"It's us against them, three against countless thousands. But for some reason, and even though it's absurd at that moment I feel pretty damn good about our odds."