Friday, June 21, 2013

Love is a Many Splendored Thing, All You Need is Love!


You know those books that while you are reading them, you must make yourself stop reading because you are so sucked into them that if you don't make yourself stop you will either pee on whatever surface you are sitting on or you will die of hunger or thirst, or better yet, you will fail your class because you haven't even started looking over your syllabus and the class started a week and a half ago?!

Or have you ever read a book that completely takes over your body, your mind, your thoughts, your feelings? Almost like the characters and their stories come alive and they move you, and even change you?

I totally just got finished reading one of those books.

You probably have not read my previous reviews on books, so I will kind of start there. I was a big fan of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I truly enjoyed reading the trilogy. So much so, actually, that when I finally dug myself out of the hole I had made with my body from sitting on the couch in one place for so long without moving, I turned around and re-read them all out loud to my husband. During the second read, I realized that they were good, but they weren't fantastic. They left my palate searching for something. For some reason, the right spice was not part of the list of ingredients. I was hungry for more.

I started browsing the web for something that could appease my ravenous appetite for a good book to devour. I ended up finding just what the doctor ordered. I found a blogger that did a blog post where she reviewed some of the books that she read status post the Collins' trilogy, which is when I found out about a trilogy in progress by Veronica Roth. So far, two out of the three books have been released (anxiously awaiting the third, can't wait!). I read Divergent first, a little too quickly, before reading Insurgent. For some reason, these books completely satisfied my need for an amazing book. These books really are AH-MAZE-ING, and I highly recommend you read them! Especially before the third and final book comes out in October! :)

Before the last 2 weeks, the only books I have read for the last 9 months have been filled with tedious information that makes my brain feel like mush after about 15 minutes of reading. When each chapter of said books takes 4-5 hours to read, that makes a real mashed potato of a brain! I had been DYING to get my hands on a book of choice for so long, I could hardly remember what it felt like to have my Kindle resting nicely in the palm of my good book greedy hand. I decided I HAD to read a book of my own choosing for the lovely but painful 2 weeks that I was off from school. I read one book during the two weeks, which is actually not the book I am reviewing today. That review will come soon. Even though school started last Monday for the summer, I could not help it. I started a second book of choice (big oooopppps)!


I began reading the Delirium trilogy by Lauren Oliver.


Image via http://laurenoliverbooks.blogspot.com/2011/06/delirium-makeover.html


Delirium is a book based in a dystopian society set in the U.S., where at age 18, all citizens are "cured" from a sickness called Amor Deleria Nervosa, which is love. The government believes that love is the source of all evil, and so all of the citizens are given a procedure to eradicate their ability to love.

Sounds interesting, right? It was spellbinding! Each chapter opened with a excerpt from an "approved" text (all texts that had love or anything to do with love were banned or changed) from the government. Each text showed the depth of cruelty of the government for getting rid of love! It was quite disgusting to read the excerpts, how twisted and reviling it would be to live in a world where love is a disease.

Any who, the story is told from the POV of the main character named Lena, who is 17 years old and just a few months away from having her procedure. At first, Lena cannot wait to have the procedure done - no love equals no chaos, no broken hearts, no pain, no feelings - she believes this is how life is supposed to be. However, her last summer of "freedom" makes her begin to think that maybe life with the ability to love is actually better than life with no love at all.

I don't want to go into any more details about the plot - spoilers make me want to puke! But I do want to show respect and appreciation of Lauren Oliver, whose writing style is exemplary! Each line in this book is beautiful! She really is a first-class writer! And there are plot twists you don't see coming - for the most part! All in all, I would highly recommend any of her works (now I want to read for debut novel, Before I Fallwhich is also supposed to be a wonderful read).

If you are into the dystopian stuff floating around, I highly recommend you read this series!

***P.S. I have been working on this post for awhile now, and I have actually completed the other 2 novels in the series, Pandemonium and Requiem. Pandemonium was really good. It was told from the POV of Lena again, however, every other chapter was titled Now, and the others were titled Then. Basically, you were reading about two different stories that ended up tying up together in the end. Very interesting. You really see Lena's character grow in this book. Her character becomes more complex and Lauren really digs deep into who she was and who she is now. Requiem is the last book of the trilogy. It is the first book where you see from someone else's POV. Every other chapter is from Lena's POV, while the others are from Lena's best friend, Hana's, POV. This book drives you crazy for a little bit. You just want to scream at everyone throughout the whole book (you know how those books are). There are some super twists in this book that I definitely did not see coming! There are a lot of reviews on Amazon for this book that are negative (which made me super unexcited to finish the really good series), however, after finishing the series, I was very happy with how it ended. People said in their reviews that there are a lot of loose ends and everything wraps up quickly, but I think it was perfect just the way it is.
I thoroughly enjoyed the series and was excited to find out that they are making the trilogy into a movie! It looks like Delirium will be a made-for-TV movie. It says on IMDB that it is in post-production, so it should be set to air somewhat soon! It shall be interesting with it being a TV movie, but hopefully it will be good (of course, not as good as the book!).

My next review will be for another book that I read with my time off! I am super excited to do a review for this book, because it is by a brand new author, who deserves some cred! I am currently reading her second book that JUST came out! Woot woot! :) (yay for reading and not doing school work!)