I wandered into the Young Adult section (which is never a good idea. Gosh, who coordinates all those books, anyways? Why do so many bad ones exist? Why do people assume that teenagers only want to stuff their brains with paranormal mush and awkward teenage drama? What's with all of the almost-but-not-quite inappropriate book covers?) For whatever reason, I walked past all the books that I really wanted, like Paper Towns and Leviathan and that gorgeous signed copy of Looking For Alaska. I came across a copy of one of my favorite books, Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall. I hugged it in a moment of remembrance and sentimentality. That is one good book. Then I noticed that Lauren Oliver had another book out - a dystopian called Delirium. So I bought it. Before I Fall was amazing, okay?! And I guess something possessed me to buy Delirium. I had high expectations for it.
I cannot express how much I disliked this book.
There are many factors which led to this sad excuse of a bestseller falling right into that abyss within me set aside for the Books We Do Not Speak Of. I don't even know where to start.
So the book is set in the future, or, like, an alternate present or something. I don't know. Meh, who cares? What matters is that in this future or alternate present or unestablished time period, love is considered a disease and everyone at the age of eighteen receives a procedure to be rid of it. The Hunger Games seems to have spawned a lengthening line of dystopians with age-related climactic events. Anyway, the main character is totally hunky dory with this until - gasp - she falls in love. How did I not see from the start just how predictable this plot is? I don't know.
First off. . . where to start. . . okay, so the main character. Her name is Lena. She is endlessly boring. There is nothing in the least that made me excited about her or made me like her or even felt relatable to me in any way. At the beginning of the book, all she really does is complain about how love is a terrible sickness and she's really nervous about her procedure and oh lord her best friend is so much prettier than her when boom - in comes the dashing, charming, enchantingly handsome young man, with a cookie cutter personality and an unrealistic eye color and a really boring name - Alex - to steal the heart that she didn't know she had. And now she is completely, eternally, absolutely in love with him 5eva and she wants to overthrow the government and she'll even forsake her family but none of that is worth it any more because this is twoo wuv, right? A random hormonal obsessive infatuation between two dull people, teenagers nonetheless, certainly is a great example of true love, the kind that makes you want to overturn mountains and scream until your lungs burst, which might just be better for all of us because you are annoying in the first place. Right?
What annoys me about Lena is that the enormous change she goes through - this whole idea of "falling in love" and realizing that love is not really what everyone tells her it is and realizing that the implications of this will change her life - seems at times to be nothing more than the flicking on and off of a light switch. She simply doesn't evolve like she should, and her change is so . . . forced.
The next problem I have is with the authoritative government that exists in the book. If it is as oppressive as Lauren Oliver wants us to believe it is, then Lena most definitely would have been discovered on one of her random illegal nighttime outings. This sort of conflict did not arise until much later in the book, and it didn't seem likely when one considers how cruel Lauren Oliver's government is made out to be. It doesn't make sense.
I don't even want to get into this any further. Bottom line: Delirium wasn't worth my time, and now I don't really want to read any more YA literature any time soon. I've had enough sappy, cliché love stories and stale dystopians, that's for sure.
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