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 government 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.
This book had so much promise, but fell short of every expectation. When I first read the summary this book sounded cool and different, but low and behold, it was just another dystopian love story. *sigh*
Lena's family history is slathered with the love disease "deliria". Her parents were actually in love (which never happens anymore because all couples are paired based on favorite colors, income, etc) and this caused her mother to contract the disease and go crazy once her father died. Her mother killed herself so Lena goes to live with her aunt and cousins, most of which have been cured.
This book is one of the dystopians that assume you know everything about the made-up world. I HATE that. It may be the near future, but still I wish the author would have taken some time for world building. The whole book takes place in Portland, but since I have never been there I can't imagine what it looks like, and the author never takes a second to describe it. Pages are spent on how Lena feels about running, her mom, school, her best friend but never on the setting itself. It was frustrating.
Of course Lena is too eager to be cured so she meets a guy. She falls in love like the summary mentions and they try to escape together into the Wilds (which again, I know nothing about this place because it was never explained to me).
I also noticed that authors of dystopians like to capitalize EVERYTHING. I don't read dystopians too often because of their horribly predictable plots, so it took me a while to notice. I mean, it might be important but that doesn't mean every other word needs to be a proper noun. You could just tell me it was important and I would be satisfied.
Examples from this book:
the Invalids
the Wilds
the Governor
the sympathizers (which ok that's not capitalized, but it was ALWAYS in italics...wtf??)
the Crypts
the Dumpsters (I really hope that's a typo)
And those are just off the top of my head. If it wasn't a library book, then I would have gone through and hilighted all the capital words that don't make any sense. How important could dumpsters be anyway?
So continuing on with the story...Lena and her lover try to escape but kinda fail. Which wasn't that surprising because both of these characters are so self-sacrificing it's ridiculous. I bet Lena would kill herself to prevent her hubby from getting food poisoning or something.
It ends with Lena making a huge self-discovery that the reader made halfway through the book. I can't believe there are more of this series, but then again...*smacks forehead*...people eat up this crap.
This book reminded me of the Uglies series. To anyone that read and liked those, I would recommend this book and possibly the rest of the Delirium series as well. Both plots are surrounded by forbidden love which is so overused at this point. Can't a girl just save the world and be single-and-ready-to-mingle?
I would consider reading the second installment of Lena and her lovesick puppy BF, but only if I was desperate for a quick read. It wasn't interesting or boring, my only motivation to finish was to find out the ending and finish the book. Overall 3 stars.
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