#52- Delirium By Lauren Oliver

#52- Delirium 

Rating-9/10

I was looking for an easy read for the plane ride home from Florida (I went this week, check the last blog post for details if you have no idea what i'm talking about) and looking through the list realized that I had read this book the first time on my way to Vegas and it seemed only appropriate that the second time around would also be after a vacation! Also here's a fun fact... Lena, the main character, and myself share a birthday! (September 3rd)

Delirium is a book set in the future, where love has been labeled a disease, amor deliria nervosa, shortened to... you guessed it... delirium. It was decided that love was a sickness and the government took over and bombed areas of the city where it was extremely bad and then changed laws and made rules to make sure that the delirium never spread again. When someone turns 18 they have a surgery that affects their brain and takes away any feelings of love. There are still some people who resist this, people who lived in the bombed areas of the world past the fences, called the wilds. Love is a bad word and is never to be used or felt again. Our narrator, Lena, is a 17 year old girl who has always wanted the cure. After seeing how her mother and sister suffered from love she has been counting down the days until she is set to be safe.

That is, until the summer before she turns 18, when she meets Alex. A mysterious boy who makes her question everything that she knows about life, love, and herself. We follow Alex, Lena, and her best friend Hanna through the summer right before their entire lives are set to change. Will the disease end up ruining them? Or will they realize that it was the cure that was setting them up for failure all along.

I really enjoyed this book, both times around. I read so many books that sometimes its impossible to remember the plot twists and characters after a while and since it had been a year since i've read it I still found myself wondering what was happening next. I really enjoyed the idea of the novel and found extreme humor in how they explained why love was a disease. It was all true. Rapid heart rate, sweating, difficulty focusing, reduced mental awareness, extreme euphoria, the list goes on and on. I had to agree with all of the things that classified love as a disease. I also loved that once we knew the symptoms we were able to feel through them with Lena and realize that even though it was a disease, love is the best kind of disease to have.

I loved the characters and felt that Lena had a great voice to be the main narrator, but I also really really liked Alex. He is someone that I wish I could hang out with in real life and see what he had to say about the world we live in now. 

I have recently been really conflicted when it comes to my love life and for those reasons I really enjoyed the first stage of the disease and found myself laughing when I realized I could define all of these symptoms to my life. Especially the reduced mental awareness and difficulty focusing. I dont think I speak only for myself when I say that I seriously second guess and think about things over and over and over again when it comes to the person I like.

I am really excited to read the rest of these books, even more excited that the sequel is out and the final book of the trilogy is out in a month! I think I will be breaking my whole, reading nothing but the 100 books project because I need to finish this trilogy.

“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.”