No. of pages: 500+
Plot: 4/5
Characters and development: 4.5/5
Overall: 4/5

Once again, this was a book I managed to borrow from the library. Delirium is the first book in a trilogy by acclaimed novelist Lauren Oliver. I started reading this book right after I finished reading The Program, so I felt that there were a number of similarities between the nature of these two books, the most major one being that they both have their plots revolving around a disease: for The Program, it's depression, and for Delirium, it's love.

In Delirium, we slowly discover how the human population has come to think that love, or amor deliria nervosa, is the foundation for all problems and conflicts, such as hatred, war, pain, etc. So they invented a "cure" which involves an operation so that people would become immune to the disease and their lives would go on smoothly. Of course one setback is the need to continue the human population, and without love the only way they were able to do it is to have matches lined up for them. So in a way, people would get married and have kids because it was an obligation to do so and to ensure the continuity of the human race. There were screwups, obviously, like cases of mothers drowning their children in toilet bowls because the parents just don't feel attached to their children at all. Oliver paints a picture where a child falls and starts crying but the parents just don't care. Also, it broke my heart in the scene where a dog got hit by a regulator and the owners just left it to die outside in pain because they felt nothing.

The plot centres around Lena, a girl who at first was looking forward to the day of her procedure where she would become "safe" from the deliria. As the story progresses we see how the walls she puts up are broken down by a guy called Alex, with whom she eventually falls in love with. She also has a best friend, Hana, with whom she always hangs out with, takes jogs with, etc. I loved how smoothly Oliver was able to develop these individual characters, especially Lena, and how the things around her affected her ideas on love. I loved Hana throughout the book - how she was so daring to step out of conformity unlike Lena, and how she was such a major influence on Hana's eventual shift in mindset.

I can't wait to read the next book in the trilogy (Pandemonium), and see how Lena's future turns out. For all who have read the book before, you'll know what I mean when I say I was really bummed at the end of the book.

I would recommend this book to people who like dystopian series like The Hunger Games. The concept of having love as a disease itself is highly intriguing and you have to wonder how people even live without it. Oliver paints the situation very well in showing how people are so afraid of love and how it is pretty much a taboo that warrants even a death penalty if mentioned.

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

"Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever."

"I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone."

No. of pages: 500+
Plot: 4/5
Characters and development: 4.5/5
Overall: 4/5

Once again, this was a book I managed to borrow from the library. Delirium is the first book in a trilogy by acclaimed novelist Lauren Oliver. I started reading this book right after I finished reading The Program, so I felt that there were a number of similarities between the nature of these two books, the most major one being that they both have their plots revolving around a disease: for The Program, it's depression, and for Delirium, it's love.

In Delirium, we slowly discover how the human population has come to think that love, or amor deliria nervosa, is the foundation for all problems and conflicts, such as hatred, war, pain, etc. So they invented a "cure" which involves an operation so that people would become immune to the disease and their lives would go on smoothly. Of course one setback is the need to continue the human population, and without love the only way they were able to do it is to have matches lined up for them. So in a way, people would get married and have kids because it was an obligation to do so and to ensure the continuity of the human race. There were screwups, obviously, like cases of mothers drowning their children in toilet bowls because the parents just don't feel attached to their children at all. Oliver paints a picture where a child falls and starts crying but the parents just don't care. Also, it broke my heart in the scene where a dog got hit by a regulator and the owners just left it to die outside in pain because they felt nothing.

The plot centres around Lena, a girl who at first was looking forward to the day of her procedure where she would become "safe" from the deliria. As the story progresses we see how the walls she puts up are broken down by a guy called Alex, with whom she eventually falls in love with. She also has a best friend, Hana, with whom she always hangs out with, takes jogs with, etc. I loved how smoothly Oliver was able to develop these individual characters, especially Lena, and how the things around her affected her ideas on love. I loved Hana throughout the book - how she was so daring to step out of conformity unlike Lena, and how she was such a major influence on Hana's eventual shift in mindset.

I can't wait to read the next book in the trilogy (Pandemonium), and see how Lena's future turns out. For all who have read the book before, you'll know what I mean when I say I was really bummed at the end of the book.

I would recommend this book to people who like dystopian series like The Hunger Games. The concept of having love as a disease itself is highly intriguing and you have to wonder how people even live without it. Oliver paints the situation very well in showing how people are so afraid of love and how it is pretty much a taboo that warrants even a death penalty if mentioned.

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

"Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever."

"I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone."