A review by frances_payne
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
3.0
I'm probably giving this book three stars mainly for the concept. It's an idea that I thought could be really interesting and really well done, but ultimately I didn't like this book as much as I wanted to.
I thought this could be a really good dystopian comment on the devastation that can come with love, but without other origin stories for the discovery of 'amor deliria nervosa', this was probably far too optimistic for a book primarily focused on a typically young-adulty naive 17-year-old. I found the story to be too focused on the effects of labelling love a disease (and the typical against-all-odds whirlwhild relationship that comes with this) than on the reasons for it being this way, which I'd have found more interesting. It didn't feel right for a story to go that far with a whole society's indiscriminate stupefying fear of love without making a huge effort to explain how it could get to that stage.
The dystopian side felt a little over the top and without explanation that could have made it believable. It goes beyond credibly being able to identify with real life feelings of love being like a disease and transcends instead into this idea that love being a disease is entirely a propaganda model and with no evident motive. I could honestly go on for pages explaining how I feel about this and how much potential this book missed out on, but essentially, I feel like the author just used this concept to create a new environment for the same tired love story.
It had its moments, but what I was hoping for this story fell flat for me.
I thought this could be a really good dystopian comment on the devastation that can come with love, but without other origin stories for the discovery of 'amor deliria nervosa', this was probably far too optimistic for a book primarily focused on a typically young-adulty naive 17-year-old. I found the story to be too focused on the effects of labelling love a disease (and the typical against-all-odds whirlwhild relationship that comes with this) than on the reasons for it being this way, which I'd have found more interesting. It didn't feel right for a story to go that far with a whole society's indiscriminate stupefying fear of love without making a huge effort to explain how it could get to that stage.
The dystopian side felt a little over the top and without explanation that could have made it believable. It goes beyond credibly being able to identify with real life feelings of love being like a disease and transcends instead into this idea that love being a disease is entirely a propaganda model and with no evident motive. I could honestly go on for pages explaining how I feel about this and how much potential this book missed out on, but essentially, I feel like the author just used this concept to create a new environment for the same tired love story.
It had its moments, but what I was hoping for this story fell flat for me.