Reviews with content warning for Medical content - Delirium

OH MY GOD. WHAT WAS THAT ENDING. ugh i loved this book but the ending left me disappointed tbh... otherwise really interesting worldbuilding and narrative!

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laurenevlyn's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Didn’t love it. DNFed about 2/3 of the way through because it was just so slow paced and I could feel it putting me in a reading slump. Maybe I’ll get back to it one day but for now it was just okay.

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saucy_bookdragon's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Delirium is a quintessential YA dystopia (derogatory).

It ticks off so much of what made the genre bad in the early 2010s that it at times reads like a parody. The world building is paper thin, falling apart with just one half brain cell of thought; the protagonist is a complete nobody bland piece of bread; and the love interest is just as bland and the romance lacks any chemistry.

With all that said, I didn’t actually begin really disliking this until I was done with the book. The prose was just okay and readable enough that I read most of it in one sitting, not so much entertained, more so I just had to finish for the book club where we specifically read bad books (this was my choice) (pretty sure all those bad books broke us so for the next few months we’re choosing good books again). I’m sure this book is just alright if you put literally zero thinking into it. Which honestly, that’s the core problem of these YA dystopias. They had some absolutely wild unrealistic dystopian premises and then ended up being shallower than a kitty pool with some truly shitastic world building.

Delirium’s premise really is laughable. It set the book up for failure from the beginning. “Love is a disease” is a bullshit premise, even for a fantasy, let’s be real. But then the book puts itself even further into the ground as it goes about failing to define what love actually is. It could’ve pulled itself together by perhaps drawing parallels to how interracial marriage was once illegal and/or how same-gender marriage was once illegal (two laws that are under threat in the US thanks to the asshats running the supreme court) (funnily, there is a terrifying line in this book that mentions how queer people are criminalized in this world and get The Cure which supposedly makes them no longer queer. This terrifying concept is never mentioned again). But nope, we’re going to stumble about and forget that there are real life situations where love is illegal and rebuild from the ground up! Let’s create another dystopia about cishet white people being oppressed in weird sci-fi ways and forget that there are marginalized people that are oppressed today!

Overall, great book pick on my part, me and the entire club hated it! Would recommend it if you want to read some bullshit!

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chaya77's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No

3.5

This book was a little boring at times but if you push through the ending is worth it, but it depends on the person.

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