Delirium - my book review

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Like most other people, the sole reason I started reading 'Delirium' was because of Lauren Oliver's 'Before I Fall'. But honestly, I much prefer her first book compared to this one.

For me, this book provided a lot of — and I do mean A LOT of — eye-rolling moments and not enough room for suspense. Everything was predictable (apart from the end, but I'll get to that later) and cheesy. Like Romeo and Juliet minus the conflict scenes.

Lena reminds me of Bella Swan... unbearingly ordinary and naïve. Both of them lack that OOMPH that a protagonist needs, thus pushing the spotlight onto their lover-boys, which in this case, is Alex.

Like all male-leads, Alex is: handsome, mysterious, brave, tender and sticks up for his girl, no matter what the risks are. Alex seems even more agitating than Edward Cullen though. A few reasons is that he seems equally as naïve as Lena, and he seems so shallow. From the start he loved Lena. From the start he wanted to obey her. Another thing that has occurred to me is HOW ON EARTH can he trick those 'ruthless, strict' regulators into thinking he was Cured? Even in this world, a simple scar does not prove that you are 'one of them'. The idea of Invalids is pretty vague as well. Along with sympathizers and resistors, Oliver leaves us wondering just exactly who these people are.

Now... The ending. The final chapter is action packed. It's thrilling. And it certainly surprised me. I thought that — like the rest of the book — the ending would be some kind of cliché, but it wasn't. I didn't expect what happened to happen. There is no lead up to it. Just BAM! and the dirt is gone (sorry for that). Because of the unexpected twist, I finally started to like this book. But, alas, it was already too late. An eye-catcher in the last few paragraphs is not good enough, even for Oliver.

To be honest, the part I was looking forward to most was when Lena would get Cured. I knew that this wasn't really gonna happen, but the idea of her foolish mind getting cured was too good to ask for.

Oh, and another thing that I found wrong in 'Delirium' is that even though it is in the future (as it is a dystopian novel, afterall), it seems as though the world hasn't really progressed. Apart from the 'cure', the world hasn't changed. There is no mention of cool high-tech gadgets, and they're still using dingy radios. And why an electric fence when you can use laser beams? Duh!!!

What's really sad is that this book could've had potential, but it was easily sorted into the pile mediocre books. As I mentioned before, the best part was the ending. That's all that it's worth.

...and I purchased 'Delirium', too. What a rip off.






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