#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.”

#20- Paper Towns By John Green

#20- Paper Towns

Rating-9.5/10

Let me start this off by saying that I am a really big fan of John Green. I love his quirky personality through gifs on tumblr, love his video blogs, and most of all I love his books!  

I have read this book before, in fact I have read it many times before, but since I am constantly reading and all stories are blended together in my head lately I decided to re-read this book before writing a proper review.

I am actually in Florida this week, my sister's and I are going to Disneyworld! We are huge Disney fans and since we live right by Disneyland and have annual passes we decided we wanted to see how Disneyworld compared. Southwest had a great deal on tickets and the rest is history! So I read this book on the flight here. Its a little over 300 pages and I was able to finish it by our first layover about two hours later.

Paper Towns is easy to get involved in, the narrator is a boy named Quentin Jacobsen, he lives in ORLANDO FLORIDA! (what are the odds? too funny, they even mention Disneyworld in the book). He has two best friends, Radar and Ben. He lives with both of his parents (who are therapists and I really enjoy their banter, too funny) in a housing development called Jefferson Park. Quentin lives next door to Margo Roth Spigelman, a very elusive and mysterious girl whom he never hung out with once they were the age that their parents didnt bring them to gatherings, but has one major childhood memory of. When they were 10 years old they went on a bike ride to the park, when they get to the entrance they notice that there is a man sitting at the stump of the tree. After closer investigation they realize that this man is in fact dead.

After that day Q never spent any time with Margo, that is until the one night at the end of senior year when she climbs into his window and tells him that she needs to borrow his car, and he is going to come with on an adventure that he will never forget. The rest of the book follows Q as he follows the mystery that is Margo Roth Spigelman and how he and his friends become closer and end their senior year with memories that they will never forget.

I know I already raved about John Green above, but let me just put it in big capital letters now (excuse my internet screaming) I LOVE JOHN GREEN AND EVERYTHING THAT HE WRITES IS LITERARY GOLD AND HE MAKES CHARACTERS COME TO LIFE AND EVERYTHING THAT COMES OUT OF HIS MIND IS GENIUS. 

Now then, since you all now know exactly how I feel, I really really like this book. On the scale of books that Green has wrote, this is my third favorite (Looking for Alaska and TFIOS are number one and two). It has quality characters, an interesting story line that gives just enough clues to not make you frustrated and just wishing you would find the answer to the mystery, and the perfect amount of nostalgic inducing quotes that stick with you for ages.

I found myself laughing outloud at some of the jokes and I am always a big fan of a narrator that I can connect with and I found myself wishing I was friends with this guy in real life. He just seemed to understand things and his incredibly romantic (if a bit misled) attempt to win over the girl was heartwarming and inspiring in many ways.

At the end of every post I usually include one quote, my favorite from the book, I'm making an exception. Below are some of my favorite quotes. I love this book. Go read it. Seriously. Now. Go. I'm waiting. Then comment below and tell me what you think about it!

• “What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.” 
• “That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste.” 
• “I'm starting to realize that people lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, & so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.” 

#57- The Gemma Doyle Trilogy (A Great and Terrible Beauty) By Libba Bray

#57- A Great and Terrible Beauty

Rating-7.5/10

I have heard many friends raving about this series and while I liked the characters I felt that the opening to the book was a really slow read. I didn't get really into it until over two hundred pages in and was forcing myself to read this at night. (versus when it's difficult to get me to put down a book and actually have a social life!) 

A Great and Terrible Beauty follows the story of young Gemma Doyle. She is living in India with her mother and father when on her 16th birthday tragedy strikes. Her mother is killed and she is sent to a proper boarding school to be bred into a respectable lady. 

While there she meets three girls; Felicity, Pippa and Ann. While they are not quick to all get along they eventually bond over a secret cave that their teacher takes them to one day. Gemma has been getting visions and can't figure out why she keeps seeing a man from india around every corner. Is she losing her mind? Or has a mysterious figure come to tell her that there was more to her mothers death than it appears.

One night when all four girls are in the caves Gemma comes across a diary, of a girl named Mary Dowd who speaks of her magical powers. The visions she describes are so much like what Gemma has experienced that she begins to frighten. The other girls all want to try their own magic and in a fit of whiskey and giggles they all join hands and try to bring about some magic of their own. That night Gemma realizes that she is no longer an ordinary 16 year old girl and opens a magical portal to a beautiful world for she and her friends.

In this world there is dreaming and laughter and also a hidden secret. Will the girls find the secret and save themselves before its too late?

I specified above that I really did like the characters that were written in. I could see myself being friends with these girls and giggling and sharing dreams together in a boarding school in another country. That being said I just really couldnt get into the magical story line. I felt like we werent shared enough information about it until the later chapters of the book and in order to keep me interested I need to feel like i'm in on the secret even if some of the characters arent aware of all of it.

I think that if I was to read the following two books (which maybe after these 100 books I will get around to) I could really find myself getting involved with these characters and wanting to know what happens. But as for now I didnt mind putting down the book and calling it quits after reading one installment of three and thats never a good sign for a series. 

So overall, go ahead and read it if you are into strong female characters and the idea of magic within our own reach. I think it was worth the time, it was just a long 400 pages.

#26- Speak By Laurie Halse Anderson

#26- Speak

Rating-8.5/10

This was one of those books that going into the project I knew I had heard of and knew the story but couldnt remember whether this was from hearing from friends or seeing the movie. I guess in some ways it felt very anticlimactic because I knew the climax storyline (its on the description of the book, so everyone knows its) and so it wasn't a surprising read. That being said, doesnt mean the book wasnt good.

Speak follows the story of Melinda, a high school freshman who has a secret inside that is eating her alive. She was raped at the end of school party in 8th grade, she was 13 and drunk and called the cops after it happened, too traumatized to say anything they came and broke up the party. No one knows that Mel was raped and therefore she gets the reputation of being the class loser, who called the cops and busted every at the end of year party. 

The following year in school she has no friends and since that night continually says less and less until she isn't speaking at all. Through the guidance of her teachers, parents, and hesitant friends Melinda eventually finds the courage to move past this rough time in her life and speak out against what happened.

I think that this story doesnt resonate as deeply within me as it does with other people because I have been extremely lucky throughout life and was never pressured by boys to do things I didnt want to do. Hell, I didnt even kiss a boy until I was 16 years old. I was sheltered and respected and for those reasons while this book made me extremely sad for Melinda, it didnt make me realize anything about my own life. (which are generally my favorite sorts of books)

I have heard stories from friends and acquaintances who were really changed by this book, that they had been sexually abused or traumatized in a way and this made them tell someone or move past it. I think for that reason this book can't be rated in numbers or stars, because for some people it was everything.

Side note: I couldnt read the book without picturing Kristen Stewart (who plays Melinda in the movie) and I kept thinking to myself how perfectly she worked as that character, another movie before book adaptation that I wasnt upset reading. Hooray for that!