Book Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Title: Delirium

Author: Lauren Oliver

Series: Delirium #1

ISBN:  978-0061726828

Publisher: HarperCollins

Pub. Date: February 2011

Genre: YA/Dystopia/Romance

Pages:  H-448

Rating: 5 Kisses

Buy: Amazon | Book Depository

Author's Website

Read an Excerpt 

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com):  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 Holoway 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.

My Reveries and Ramblings:  The beautiful message of Delirium:  Love.  A four letter word.  A word that has caused people to write poetry, songs, and countless novels.  A word that has led people to take their own lives.  Love is complex.  Love can be happy and sad at the same time.  Love can be overwhelming.  It is like chocolate for the soul.  One can survive without it, but, they can not live without it.  Love doesn’t always have to be romantic, it can be parental, or between friends or siblings.  It can take any form, but without it, we aren’t really alive. 

       Delirium is, down to the binding, a book about love.  In a society where love, deliria, is thought of as a lethal disease.  At the age of 18, people are “cured.”  This involves going through a surgery that will ultimately cure you of deliria and keep you from getting it.  The summer before Lena is scheduled to be cured, she meets Alex.  Originally thinking he is cured (she sees this “surgery” scars), Lena talks to him.  However, soon she discovers that not only is he uncured, but he is also a rebel, an Invalid.  The Invalids are people who live in the Wilds, outside of the borders.  They hate what the US government is doing, controlling people by removing their ability to love.  After confessing who he really is, Lena is petrified that she has become infected with deliria.  She has always been scared of contracting the disease. Her mother had it, even though she went through three separate surgeries to get it removed.  It destroyed her.  After getting saved by Alex during a raid, Lena officially falls for him.  Their love opens her eyes to how dead she was before she fell in love.  The tightly controlled loveless world she has always known is wrong.  It is with Alex that she realizes that everything she has ever known, all the rules she was molded by, is a lie.  Their love is a tragedy waiting to happen.  Lena only has a few months before getting cured.  After that she will go to college and marry her assigned match.  Before Alex, she couldn’t wait. Now, she would rather die than live without love. 

       I had a love/hate relationship with this book.  I find dystopian literature interesting, but very hard to get through.  I almost always have to put the book down after each chapter or so because I’m so angry or scared.  Dystopian societies are frightening.  Which is why I rarely read them.  When I do, I read a lot of reviews on the book to make sure it is worth the emotional roller coaster I will most likely be going on.  This one intrigued me because not only are people oppressed, but they think it’s the only way.  They want to be cured.  The population is brainwashed through the government’s control of communication.  By controlling what people read, watch, listen to, etc., the government convinced people that love (deliria) is a terrible disease.  Without love, people don’t feel the need to die unnecessarily or fight for anything.  It’s probably the strongest emotion a human can have.  However, the idea that people are forced to undergo a surgery to never love, that pains me.  This book was so hard to get through because I was so shocked at the cruelty of it.  Those who knew the truth about it were severely punished or killed (usually the latter). 

       Lena is a seventeen yr old girl who is looking forward to being cured at the end of the summer.  She always follows the rules, and believes that the government and the cure are protecting her from a painful death.  She wants nothing more than to live her life without the fear of contracting deliria.  Her transformation in the book was slow and gradual.  Written through her POV, the reader sees the uncertainty and fear in her. She started scared, insecure, and very ignorant.  As the story progresses she finds love, learns the truth, and finds strength in having her own mind.  Alex, an Invalid, was born in the Wilds and moved around a lot.  He falls in love with Lena, forcing her to rethink everything about herself, essentially a mild identity crisis.  Alex teaches Lena about love and how it’s those who can’t love that aren’t really living.  He opens her eyes.  Their relationship is very Romeo-and-Juliet-esque.  He risks his life every day to see her; if he was caught he’d be killed.  The only other person who knows about their relationship is Hana, Lena’s best friend.  She is not looking forward to the cure.  People in this society would call her a rebellious teen, however in reality (the reader’s world) she would be seen as a normal 17 yr old.  She supports their relationship and helps Lena sneak out after curfew to see him. 

       Lauren Oliver wrote a story that makes you think and reflect on the importance of love and how we, as human beings, sometimes take for granted that we can love.  She also explores the lengths people would go through to keep love and those they love.  Delirium invoked so many emotions in me.  Alex and Lena’s love was beautiful.  It was slow and shown through actions.  The words “I love you” are rarely said.  But the intention, the love, is there.  You see it in the sacrifices and risks made.  Everything about Delirium was amazing.  Instead of hating Lena for believing in propaganda the government puts out to brainwash, Lauren Oliver shows us through her POV so that the reader understands.  Delirium wasn’t exactly action packed.  There were a few action scenes, but not many and they were spread out.  The book is filled with suspense.  It looms over the story sending chills through your spine and increasing your heart rate.  Lena and Hana could be running and you still feel that weight, that feeling of being watched that fills you with apprehension.  I’m so glad I picked up this book.  This heartbreaking novel will leave you in tears.  I cannot wait until the sequel comes out! 

Warning: Cliff-hanger ending.

Fan-Made Book Trailer:

Official Song Inspired by Delirium:

Playlist(s):

Click here to see/listen to Lauren Oliver's official playlist for Delirium

*note- "Run" by Snow Patrol is the song that came on while I was reading the last chapter.   I think if the book was a movie, "Run" would be playing during that scene.  It's perfect for it (in my opinion).

Book Review: Juliet by Anne Fortier

Title: Juliet

Author: Anne Fortier

ISBN:  978-0345516107

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Pub. Date: August 2010

Genre: Historical Fiction/Romance/Mystery/Treasure Hunting/Shakespeare

Pages: H-464

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Author's Website

Synopsis (from Goodreads.com): Twenty-five-year-old Julie Jacobs is heartbroken over the death of her beloved aunt Rose. But the shock goes even deeper when she learns that the woman who has been like a mother to her has left her entire estate to Julie’s twin sister. The only thing Julie receives is a key—one carried by her mother on the day she herself died—to a safety-deposit box in Siena, Italy.

   

This key sends Julie on a journey that will change her life forever—a journey into the troubled past of her ancestor Giulietta Tolomei. In 1340, still reeling from the slaughter of her parents, Giulietta was smuggled into Siena, where she met a young man named Romeo. Their ill-fated love turned medieval Siena upside-down and went on to inspire generations of poets and artists, the story reaching its pinnacle in Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. 

   

But six centuries have a way of catching up to the present, and Julie gradually begins to discover that here, in this ancient city, the past and present are hard to tell apart. The deeper she delves into the history of Romeo and Giulietta, and the closer she gets to the treasure they allegedly left behind, the greater the danger surrounding her—superstitions, ancient hostilities, and personal vendettas. As Julie crosses paths with the descendants of the families involved in the unforgettable blood feud, she begins to fear that the notorious curse—“A plague on both your houses!”—is still at work, and that she is destined to be its next target. Only someone like Romeo, it seems, could save her from this dreaded fate, but his story ended long ago. Or did it?

   

From Anne Fortier comes a sweeping, beautifully written novel of intrigue and identity, of love and legacy, as a young woman discovers that her own fate is irrevocably tied—for better or worse—to literature’s greatest star-crossed lovers.

My Ramblings and Reveries: I had seen this book on B&N’s coming soon page and had to get it as soon as it was released-which I did at the end of August 2010.  This book brought me into a month long obsession with Italy.  I grilled my parents for days about our family which came from Italy.  I was secretly hoping that there was some sort of cool mystery, death, or curse or something that would allow me to go on the same kind of adventure as the protagonist, Julie, did in Juliet.  I was so disappointed when there was nothing-but I’m not giving my hopes up until I step foot in Italy and find out for myself ;) 

       Juliet begins with Julie Jacobs finding out about the death of her great aunt, who raised her and her sister, Janice.  After she is told by Umberto, the butler, and her aunt’s lawyer that the estate was left for Janice, a broke Julie goes to Siena, Italy to find the family treasure that was left for her by their mother.  In college, Julie Jacobs went to Italy with a group of peace activists only to be kicked out of the country and asked to never return.  This time she enters the country as Giulietta Tolomei, her birth name.  On the plane she meets Eva Maria Salimbeni who informs her to be careful about who she tells her name to.  She begins to tell Julie, or Giulietta, about the history between their two families.  What follows is 400 pages filled with a treasure hunt for Juliet’s eyes, a gold statue with very very valuable jewels for eyes.  However, this statue is said to be located at the grave of Romeo and Juliet, which no one has seen since the black plague.  Led by only her dead mother’s notes and a copy of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Julie sets out on a wild treasure hunt.  There is another thing-a powerful curse that all started with the Friar Lorenzo, who was the friar responsible for Romeo and Juliet’s romance all those years ago.  As he was being tortured he cursed the Tolomei (Juliet and Julie’s family) and the Salimbeni (Eva Maria’s family-and the evil man who tore Juliet and Romeo apart’s family) family.

“A plague on both your houses

You shall all perish in fire and gore

Your children forever wail under a mad moon

Till you undo your sins and kneel before the Virgin

And Giulietta wakes to behold her Romeo.”

Of course Julie doesn’t have an easy time trying to end the curse and find the treasure- what with Alessandro Santini wanting her to stay away from him and his godmother Eva Maria.  Then when he finally befriends Julie, he starts doing some very suspicious things.  Then there’s the issue of someone on a motor cycle who keeps following her everywhere.  And to top it off, the Maestro painter who she befriends and who owns the painting of the original Juliet from all those years ago, tells her that Romeo comes to his studio almost every night to drink a glass of wine and look at the painting.  And no, he is no ghost- for ghosts don’t drink wine. 

       Take The Da Vinci Code, National Treasure, Romeo and Juliet, and Anne Fortier’s imagination and writing and you get Juliet, a beautiful love story spanning centuries and a treasure hunt.  This is one of my favorite books.  I opened it to skim through before writing this review and ended up rereading it completely -I did not expect to stay up until 5 AM.  And now all I want to do is go to Siena.  Having been to Italy once before (about 4 or 5 years ago) I have to say it felt like Italy, I was right there.  Not only that but I remember seeing the places that she describes in the book, which make it all the more real. 

       The middle chunk of the book alternates between the past and present.  The past being the “real” Romeo and Juliet in 1340.  The story is sad and tragic.  In my opinion, it’s even more tragic than the Shakespeare version.  Now many years later, their decedents are cursed and trying to break it.  But will Romeo and Juliet of today’s world find love or tragedy? 

       Julie Jacobs, or Giulietta was a great character.  I truly related to her.  I hated her twin sister, Janice, so much.  But eventually grew to like her.  Alessandro Santini is a hot Italian man.  He is the head of security for the local 500 yr old bank, very hot, and a tortured soul.  Who doesn’t love all that?  Plus he’s got some secrets.

       I URGE you to read this book.  Juliet is a passionate tale of love, death, secrets, fate/destiny, and finding oneself.  It will have you believing that Romeo and Juliet existed and that this curse is for real-which of course both aren’t true.  You will be transported to Italy and will never want to leave. You will wish/pray/hope/beg that you can find your Romeo.  You will beseech your parents to let you go to Italy to find love and adventure.  You won’t know what to do with yourself when it ends.  I give it 5 Kisses.    

Book Trailer:

Just because I think Romeo and Juliet is one of the greatest (albeit tragic) love stories of all time:

Playlist: