Delirium (Delirium, #1) in Around the World in 80 Books

Aug 15, 2011 Sarah rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, young-adult, gr-author, dystopian

This book was like reheated pizza. Not bad, but not great. I get what the premise is supposed to be about. It's like an extreme version of those people who put up emotional walls. It keeps them from getting hurt, but it also keeps them from being touched. And some of the similes and descriptions were nice. But for the most part I just wasn't super into the story. It seemed like not a lot happened. Maybe that is because it's the first of a... what? Series? Trilogy? Maybe this was just establishin ...more

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Feb 02, 2011 Kat (A Journey In Reading) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-books, young-adult, read-in-2011

Imagine living in a world where loving someone is illegal, where you are paired with the person you will spend the rest of your life with based on the answers to an evaluation you go through, and where when you turn 18 you are given the "cure".

In Oliver's Delirium, the people are regulated by the government. If you are found having physical contact or speaking to members of the opposite gender before you are cured, you are considered infected and sent off to a prison called The Crypts. You are f Imagine living in a world where loving someone is illegal, where you are paired with the person you will spend the rest of your life with based on the answers to an evaluation you go through, and where when you turn 18 you are given the "cure".

In Oliver's Delirium, the people are regulated by the government. If you are found having physical contact or speaking to members of the opposite gender before you are cured, you are considered infected and sent off to a prison called The Crypts. You are forbidden to read certain books, listen to certain music etc because they are all considered to be part of the infection.

Lena is in her senior year of high school and looking forward to her evaluation, her procedure of cure and being considered "safe". She has always been concerned that she wasn't normal, because her mother never was "cured" and committed suicide over the love she had for her husband.

Lena has always been the good girl, has always conformed to the rules and believed in the cure. That is until she meets Alex. Alex is "cured" so he doesn't pose a threat to her. The more she gets to know Alex and his past, the more she discovers that things aren't as they seem.

I enjoyed this book immensely. It of course has the high school things that you miss after being out of school for years.... the best friend, the sleep overs, getting ready for graduation, anticipating college and teen love. I appreciated how this book was different than so many other young adult books in that Alex and Lena weren't in love with each other after only 2 days. The book also brought in some poems from Poe and Barrett-Browning and plays from Shakespeare... which is always a plus. The ending left off in the perfect place for the second book in this trilogy to pick up and move forward. I can't wait for the next in the series.

This is the second book by Oliver that I have read, and I must say that I am impressed. Her writing is absolutely wonderful. She knows how to write a dystopian story. In both of her books, while I was reading them and after, I have continued to think about the characters in the books and their lives. Rarely does an author do that for me. Oliver is truly one of a kind. ...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: young-adult, dystopian-and-post-apocalyptic

from the NPR poll of best young adult fiction

Love is the drug, got a hook in me
Oh oh catch that buzz
Love is the drug Im thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Love is the drug for me

... can't help thinking of the old Roxy Music song when I read this ...

I stayed up late to finish this, and I'm sorry I did that, because now I'm finished. No more book :-(

I wasn't expecting to like this book as much as I did. It sounds so contrived. To my surprise, this was the most believable dystopian I've read! (And from the NPR poll of best young adult fiction

Love is the drug, got a hook in me
Oh oh catch that buzz
Love is the drug Im thinking of
Oh oh can't you see
Love is the drug for me

... can't help thinking of the old Roxy Music song when I read this ...

I stayed up late to finish this, and I'm sorry I did that, because now I'm finished. No more book :-(

I wasn't expecting to like this book as much as I did. It sounds so contrived. To my surprise, this was the most believable dystopian I've read! (And I've been reading a lot of dystopians lately!) Yes, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War was very realistic, but, you know, zombies ... not so believable. And books like Unwind and Ashfall are just too extreme to feel believable. But this one, this one, I could really feel it. I thought this was going to be all angsty teen romancey, but it's not. Yes, there is romance (how could there not be, in a book about love being illegal???), but it's not the light fluffy angsty romance I was expecting. Yeah, okay, it's angsty, but not light and fluffy. This book was so POIGNANT. It's about the insecurities that we all feel as teens: I'm not pretty enough, I'm not special enough, I don't know what I want from my life, am I doing the right thing, childhood is so boring and yet so short ...

Synopsis in brief: A generation ago, the US government developed a brain surgery procedure a bit like a lobotomy, to remove feelings of love, as well as just about all other emotions. It seems to lead to rather subpar parenting, and enforcement is constant, so I can't see how this society will be sustainable, and I'm interested to see where Oliver goes with this in the series. Naturally, our heroine, Lena, falls in love. With Alex. Who seems to be just about the perfect guy ever! His hair is like autumn leaves in the sun, and always the glint of a smile in his eyes, and he really REALLY likes Lena. But ... love is illegal ...

I didn't like the ending though. It had better be satisfactorily resolved in Pandemonium ...more

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Nov 01, 2011 Jayme Pendergraft rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

I could not wait for this book to be over, but by the time I got to the end, I wanted more. I'm not sure if I'll pick up the second book. I may have had my fill of dystopian teenage girl books but this one just seemed too slow. I enjoyed the tid bits from the Book of Shh and the later sprinklings of poetry and prose as Lana's world grew. The love story was pretty good but there seemed to be too many other things going on. What's the story with her family? Why is this world like this and for how ...more

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