Requiem: a brief review

from Goodreads.com

When I finished Lauren Oliver's second book in her Delirium trilogy, Pandemonium, I was eager to plow ahead right away and read her conclusion as soon as possible. Pretty soon after I started reading, though, the Olympics started and then I got a stomach bug where I just wanted to watch 30 Rock on Netflix instead of read my book...and then came the shocking email reminder from my library that my book was going to disappear from my Kindle in two days. Oh right...it's a library book. After a little research I discovered that I can't renew it because there's a hold on it. But the great state of Virginia decided to be blasted with snow for the 47th time this winter, and the 15+ inches (it's still snowing) outside have allowed me the gift of a reading day. And I finished before the library took it away from me. Boo-ya.

I really want to try to give a minor description of the book without giving anything away, but just like I said last time, that's hard. So all I'll say is that the plot picks up right where the last ends, and this time the chapters switch back and forth between Lena and Hana, her best friend from Portland who doesn't appear at all in the second book. There are a couple of truly great "whaaat" moments, a couple twists that you see coming but that still make you smile when they happen, and plenty of action and suspense. There's even a love triangle, and even though the fact that there seems to always be a love triangle started to annoy me years ago, it works well enough.

I talked quite a bit in my last review about how I didn't love the first book in this trilogy, Delirium, but I enjoyed both Pandemonium and Requiem a lot. The action and suspense kept me hooked, her tactic of switching perspectives between chapters (through place in time in Pandemonium and through characters in Requiem) kept me really engaged, but I think the discussion of what love is and how it really affects us is what puts the trilogy on a deeper level than some other dystopian novels out right now. In the end, both Lena and Hana see the pros and cons of their very different situations and question their life choices to the core. Lena certainly learns that having freedom doesn't make life as simple and ideal as it seems. They're good books: entertaining, engaging, and thought-provoking.