Book Name: Delirium
Author/s: Lauren Oliver
Language English
Publisher, year: HarperCollins 2011
Page total: 440
Date Read: December 12th-17th 2010
Genre/s: YA, Dystopian Fiction, Romance
Synopsis/Description: 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.
First line of Book:It has been sixty-four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty-three since the scientists perfected a cure.
Review:
After reading Before I Fall, I decided I’d read anything Lauren Oliver wrote. She writes amazingly , you know? Well, now you do.

I love Delirium’s concept, especially because love does sound like a disease, in the way it is described by the authorities, and the symptoms... my God! That part was so cool! I also liked the way even huge love stories (think R+J) and poems were distorted to prove the Government’s point of view, and that there are scientific articles about amor deliria nervosa (aka ”love”, though I think the first it way cooler) and its relation with other problems of Mankind. (Speaking of which, if you go to LO’s website, there are some pretty great “testimonials” of cured people and other things like that. Just so that you know...)

Lena was a likable heroine. She was brave (even without knowing it) and strong-minded and stubborn. She matured so much from the begining of the story, though in a believable way, I think.

I loved Alex, the way he showed Lena the good things of the world, his patience and rebelliousness and when he tells Lena why he loves her... that was so sweet!

The plot had some predictable (or maybe obvious) things, but there was a huge twist that left me gaping open-mouthed at the screen.

The ending was a cliffhanger, but I guess that’s the point – it’s a series, after all, but if you, like me, are afraid it will end like Uglies... I can’t tell you how it ends but it is not like Uglies (thank God for that).

So if you’re looking for a futuristic, anti-love society, with a couple of star-crossed lovers and some fantastic quotes, this is the book for you.
Rating: 4/5
Quotes from book:
"Hearts are fragile things. That's why you have to be so careful"

"Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything it two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.
Before and after-and during, a word no bigger or longer than an edge."

"Love, the deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it, and when you do not.
But that isn't it, exactly.
The condemner and the condemned. The executioner; the blade; the last-minute reprieve; the gasping breath and the rolling sky above you and the thank you, thank you, thank you, God.