Jen reads... Requiem

Normally I would put a picture of the book cover here, but seeing as the only picture I could find (okay so I may not have looked beyond the first few images in the Google image search I did) was… not to my taste, I haven’t this time. If I had liked the book more, I might have made more of an effort… (this bodes well eh?)

I wrote about the previous two books in the series here and here. For anybody who has read all three you can probably tell that it’s a bit of a mixed bag so far… I sort of enjoyed the books but then… hmm. This post may be a bit spoilery so if you don’t want to be spoiled about anything you can have my general feelings about the book now: Meh.

It’s been a while since I read the book, and to be honest not much of it has stuck with me, apart from frustration at the ending. It ends in a stupid unsatisfying place, and I sort of don’t mind when more… serious(?) fiction does that, but when I’m reading something as a light easy read, I want closure dammit!!!)

The other thing that annoyed me was the unnecessary love triangle. 

At some point I really need to read some YA which does not have any kind of love triangle, or hint of a love triangle in it. I HATE love triangles. I might have enjoyed it when I was 14 and knew nothing about what actual relationships are like. But now I would much prefer to read about relationships which actually seem real to me, and love triangles just don’t ever seem that realistic. I’m sure that they are something that happens in real life, but surely not to the extent that they’re featured in fiction. It would be nice to see someone in an honest, trusting relationship at some point, who isn't also secretly madly in love with someone else. To be honest, this may be more of a reflection of the kind of completely drama free relationships that I've been in, maybe if you haven't had such a calm love life as I have then this kind of relationship drama might seem more realistic.

The main problem that I have with love triangles is that whoever is at the centre of them (and it seems to be the girl a lot of the time) sort of ends up seeming like a bitch. In this book, Lena is forced into a love triangle that she didn't really do anything to create, but she does NOT deal with it in a good way. That's not to say that how she deals with it is unrealistic, but it completely made me lose sympathy for the character for long stretches of the book, and that was something that I feel that I would have needed to enjoy this more. I feel that the book could have explored the situation in much more interesting way, but just... didn't.

Urgh.

Anyway. The ending is stupid. Love triangles are stupid. I didn't actively hate this book when I was reading it, and I wouldn't say I hate it now, but looking back on the whole trilogy… I’m not sure that I would recommend reading it. If you are actually in the intended audience for the books you would probably enjoy them more than I did.

On the positive side though, I do think that the books were all nicely written, and although I'm not sure I'll ever pick them up and re-read them, I will keep an eye out for the next Lauren Oliver book.

Jen reads… Pandemonium

Pandemonium is the second book in the Delirium trilogy by Lauren Oliver. You can read my thoughts on the first book, Delirium, here.

As this is the second book in the trilogy, the post will almost definitely contain spoilers for the first book, so if you have any plans to read it and hate spoilers the way I do, stop reading now!

Like I said in my post about the first book, I liked it so much that I bought the second book as soon as I finished the first… and then I didn't touch it for a month or so. The more time passed between reading the first book and starting the second, the more I felt myself losing affection for the first book, and losing enthusiasm towards the second book. Which was weird, as that almost never happens to me. Sometimes it happens the other way round, in that I can find something not so great, but then realise later (or trick myself into thinking later) that it was much better than I initially thought.

So I was a bit… wary when I started reading it. I think one of the main things that I found put me off the series was not having ANY idea where it would go from the end of the first book, where Lena is basically left on her own, without any of the characters who you've grown to like/dislike in the first book. Which would be fine if you found Lena really compelling… but I’m not sure that I do. I think I’m more interested in what she does than who she is, if that makes sense.

Luckily, I remember while I was reading it that this series is written really nicely, and it’s very easy to read. In this book, the story is split between two different time periods – the time after Lena has escaped to the wilds, and a time six months in the future. This mostly worked well, although I wanted a bit more information to fill in the gap, as there are some things in there which I think would have been interesting which aren't really touched upon.

Much as I enjoyed reading the book though, the ending was stupidly obvious, and it seems like the next book is going to go down a road which I don’t really like in general in fiction of any kind. So I’m not rushing out to buy it. But I’m sure I will read it at some point in the near future.

So, not a glowing review, but if you liked the first one in the series, I think you would like this as well. 

Jen reads... Delirium

I don’t often read love stories. This is not to say that I have anything against them, it’s probably just that my idea of what romantic literature is like is based around horrendous novels that occasionally came free with the kind of magazines I would buy when I was a teenager. Most other books I have read tend to either show relationships in a negative light, or something which is unattainable. So, for me to choose to read this book, which is all about the idea of what society would be like without love, was slightly out of character. Maybe I’m becoming less cynical as I grow older? Who knows.

The main idea behind this book is what would happen if love, instead of being seen as something positive, was seen as a disease. In the world that this is set in, all teenagers have a procedure when they are 18 which stops them from being able to love. It’s an interesting idea, and it’s nicely expanded on in the book, which shows how it would affect other non-romantic relationships. The protagonist’s relationship with her sister changes dramatically when her sister has the procedure, for example, and it also shows how parents might treat their children if they didn’t feel any love towards them.

It’s pretty obvious that the main character, Lena, is going to fall in love with someone in the book. One of the criticisms that I could have had about the book is that the object of her affection is portrayed as perfect… but given the context, this didn’t bother me at all. It’s a pretty accurate depiction of what the early stages of falling for someone are like, and given that love is forbidden, it makes sense that things like that would be even more intense, and the first person that you liked would be seem even more perfect.

One niggling problem that I had with the book was the whole parent/child relationship thing. If parents didn’t love their children, then it’s amazing that there didn’t seem to be very many cases of abuse or neglect, and that the teenagers in the book seemed to be well adjusted (well, apart from the fear of love!).  That stuff is hinted at, but I feel like it would be wayyy more prevalent than it was shown to be. Mind you, as the book is seen from Lena’s point of view then this may just be because her upbringing wasn’t conventional (for that society, anyway).

One thing that I really liked about this though (and this might count as a spoiler) was that unlike quite a lot of books like this, the world was expanded on throughout the whole book, rather than being a.. set up some background information and then send the main character somewhere else straight away book.

Anyway, I liked this so much that I immediately got the second book in the series, so take that as a hearty recommendation! I hope that I enjoy the rest of the trilogy as much!!