Delirium Series by Lauren Oliver

Are looking to fill that The Hunger Games shaped void left in your life after you finished reading the series and watched the movie?  Look no further than the Delirium series by Lauren Oliver! The first book Delirium was released last year, and the second in the series Pandemonium just came out.  The novels are set in a dystopian version of the United States in which love is viewed as a disease, amor deleria nervosa, and the government has mandated that everyone must receive the procedure at age 18 to cure them, and save them from this dreaded condition.  The procedure is scary--sometimes it doesn't go well, and people can be left with devastating mental impairments, or die.  Outside the strictly controlled cities are the Wilds, where Invalids (people who are uncured) are rumored to live.  A few months before her scheduled procedure, Lena meets Alex, an Invalid, who has faked having the cure (a scar behind your ear is proof of the procedure) so he can live undetected in society.  Lena falls in love with Alex and is torn between the possibility of an uncertain future with him in the Wilds, leaving everything and everyone she knows and going against everything she has been taught from The Book of Shhh, and having the procedure, losing Alex and her ability to love.



I cannot go into much detail about the plot of Pandemonium without giving away the ending of Delirium, but I will say the second in the series is even better than the first!  It's very suspenseful and I am anxiously awaiting the next book Requiem, due out in 2013.

-Reviewed by Jen