Requiem Review

TITLE Requiem (Delirium #2)
AUTHOR Lauren Oliver
PUBLICATION March 5th 2013 by HarperTeen
READ February 12 to 13, 2013
SOURCE HarperCollins via Edelweiss for review

They have tried to squeeze us out, to stamp us into the past.

But we are still here.

And there are more of us every day.

Now an active member of the resistance, Lena has been transformed. The nascent rebellion that was under way in Pandemonium has ignited into an all-out revolution in Requiem, and Lena is at the center of the fight.

After rescuing Julian from a death sentence, Lena and her friends fled to the Wilds. But the Wilds are no longer a safe haven—pockets of rebellion have opened throughout the country, and the government cannot deny the existence of Invalids. Regulators now infiltrate the borderlands to stamp out the rebels, and as Lena navigates the increasingly dangerous terrain, her best friend, Hana, lives a safe, loveless life in Portland as the fiancée of the young mayor.

Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings.

Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it.

But we have chosen a different road.

And in the end, that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose.

We are even free to choose the wrong thing.

Requiem is told from both Lena’s and Hana’s points of view. The two girls live side by side in a world that divides them until, at last, their stories converge.

While this review is spoiler free for Requiem it does have spoilers for both Delirium & Pandemonium. If you haven't read the first two books in this series you've been warned!

The beginning of this year is turning out to be a sad, yet very exciting time in my life. Exciting because books in some of my favourite series are coming out left & right and sad because in a few cases it's the final book in the series. After being blown away by the final book in Cynthia Hand's Unearthly trilogy I picked up Requiem ready to say goodbye to some more characters I have come to love. I don't know if I was left as satisfied by the end of the Delirium series as I would have liked to be, but I definitely loved every moment on the way to the end.

The book kicks off right after the shocking cliffhanger of Pandemonium as Lena, Raven, Tack and the rest of the crew head back into the wilds. I have thought about trying to make this review spoiler free for the series but have come to the conclusion that it would be impossible to get my feelings across as I want to so spoilers for both Delirium and Pandemonium will be in this review people, turn back now if you must. So, as they head back into the wilds Lena is shocked, and incredibly torn. Alex's sudden appearance and joining of the resistance has left her not knowing who her emotions lie with. On one hand she successfully extracted Julian and began to fall for him when they were held captive but on the other hand Alex is back and he was her first true love. I am a huge Alex fan so the reluctance in both of them to embrace what is between them was super frustrating but definitely understandable, so I could go with it.

Not only do we have Lena's story in this one, we also have Hana's. The chapters switch POV's and we follow Hana in the days leading up to her pairing with the new mayor of Portland. Hers is a rocky road for sure, following the cure she is feeling emotions that she doesn't think she should be feeling and seeing a side of her pair that she never expected. I felt really bad for her, she was having emotions that she was supposed to be cured from and had to go on with life as it she wasn't having them for fear of people around her finding out. The contrast between the Hana's life and Lena's is so stark. While Hana lives in the lap of luxury, Lena is roughing it every day so the difference in POV's felt really solid and I never had to question who I was reading about.

The characters that really stuck with me in this one are definitely one Lena's side of things so back to them. I really liked the change that Julian went through in this one. He went from being a child of privilege and an avid believer in Deliria Free America (the DFA) to being thrust into a life where he didn't have running water or a pot to piss in. But he transitioned so well. He embraced the change and his eyes were definitely opened to the other side of the wall. He was also really good with Lena. As soon as Alex showed up he knew that Lena's emotions were all over the place and he took a step back to let her figure everything out but was there for her in any way he could. I wasn't a huge fan of him in Pandemonium but I definitely came to respect the man he came to be in Requiem. Also thrown into the romantic mix is Alex. Part of me had wanted Lena & him to jump right back to where they were in Delirium but they had both changed so much and been through so much that I could see why they didn't. I hadn't expected to shift in "teams" so much in this one but I really came to like Julian and found myself incredibly frustrated with Alex.

While all this angsty mumbo jumbo is going on they are in the thick of the resistance rising up again the regulators. The action was amped up in this one quite a bit as the resistance rose up and started to penetrate the cured cities. The way the people live in the wilds and work together to remain free is one of my favourite parts of this series and I loved seeing them rise up. Raven is such a strong leader and we meet many others in this instalment. We also say goodbye to one beloved character that had me pretty torn up. What made the uprising feel even more intense is that we got to experience both sides of the battle. We experience Lena being in the middle of everything and plotting to barge the wall and we also get to see how it is affecting the city through Hana and the mayor. The two POV's really worked so well in this and enriched the story a lot.

I was not fully prepared for the series to end the way that it did and while I loved the road to get to the end, I am not sure that I was left completely satisfied. I feel like I need more, I feel like there wasn't enough resolution for my liking and I am left to wonder about so many things. That was obviously Oliver's intention, to keep you thinking about it and speculating long after finishing and I think I will be doing that for a long time to come. These are characters that I am going to miss and it is a novel that I want to talk about. So please if you have read it, tweet me!