Review: Delirium

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


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.