Lauren Oliver: "Delirium" // Review

"They say that the cure for love will make me happy and safe forever. And I've always believed them. Until now. Now everything has changed. Now, I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years suffocated by a lie. There was a time when love was the most important thing in the world. People would go to the end of the earth to find it. They would tell lies for it. Even kill for it. Then, at last, they found the cure."

I picked Delirium up on a trip to the library last week, after finding virtually nothing else in the fiction cabinet that I was interested in. A cure for love? Hell yeah, that's interesting. My love of dystopian novels is no secret.

Our narrator is a 17 year old girl called Magdalena, or Lena, who, like everyone else in Portland, America, must have the compulsory operation (which includes cutting out part of the brain) to rid herself of the deliria. The deliria is love in any sense, romantic or pure - the love you feel for your family as much as love for a partner. All love must be exterminated, as "the deadliest of all deadly things". 

Lena's operation is set for her 18th birthday, and at first she welcomes 'the cure'; as she hopes it will lessen the grief she feels at the thought of her mother's alleged suicide. Lena's dad is gone, too, having been taken by cancer prior to her mother's death. Lena's sister Rachel has already undergone the operation - has forgotten all about the tenderness of her first love, who she was torn from, and living an adequate yet emotionless life as the wife of another man. Lena herself will be matched to an appropriate suitor before long. But, as the preparations begin, Lena's best friend Hana starts acting strangely, starts getting into illegal activity such as mingling with boys and staying out past curfew. When Lena follows her to a party one day... will something or someone turn her against 'the cure'? And is the Government really protecting its people?

OH MY GOD, THIS BOOK. It was everything I wanted it to be. Alex was such a sweetheart! I cried so hard when he and Lena fell in love. I don't know why I cry at all the happy bits; I mean, I would have cried at the ending but I guess I was too disappointed to. What's amazing about this book is your emotions are manipulated to reflect the characters', in the end. It's both heartwarming and heartbreaking at all the right times. A rollercoaster ride of deceit, love, and loss. PICK IT UP. I cannot wait to read the next one in the series: Pandemonium.

Rating: ★★★★★

Thanks for taking the time to read! Feel free to add me on Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/meaghanbethany

Tim Weaver: "Vanished" (David Raker #3) // Review

"For millions of Londoners, the morning of 16th December is just like any other. But not for Sam Wren. An hour after leaving home, he gets on to a Tube train - and never gets off again. No eyewitnesses. No trace of him on security cameras. Six months later, he's still missing. Sam's wife hires David Raker to track him down, but in this case the secrets go deeper than anyone imagined. For, as Raker starts to suspect that even the police are lying to him, someone is watching."

Vanished, the third book in Tim Weaver's David Raker series, was given to me one Christmas by my mum, who (bless her) doesn't really know much about my reading taste other than, well, I like books. So, after unwrapping the book from the paper and having a glance at the blurb, it laid on my shelf - an anomaly - for some time. One day, I decided to force myself to read it, and, to my surprise, found myself enjoying it. Now I'm a little bit more grateful that my mum doesn't really know what to buy me, because it means I end up with books that I'd never have read otherwise. David Raker is an ex-journalist turned private detective; a man who has lost his own wife to cancer, dedicated to finding the missing. But it all comes at a cost. Sam is a man many believed to have been squeaky clean, but could he have been wrapped up in something much darker than anyone expected? As Raker hunts him down and gets deeper and deeper into the case, the lines become distorted until soon enough, Raker may be hunting a murderer. 

Something I love about this book is that it keeps you constantly guessing - you desperately want to know how Sam managed to get off the train unseen, why he left, and where he is now. Unfortunately for us, Weaver is a master of pacing and misdirection; which means that most of the second half of the novel isn't much about Sam at all, but about those that Raker suspects drove him away. Honestly, I can't say much about the plot without revealing something important that you shouldn't know; which just shows you how closely interwoven the story is. It leads you everywhere, to people and places you'd never expect. I really, really, enjoyed it, even though I'd never in my wildest dreams have picked up a detective/mystery/crime novel before this week. I hadn't even read the previous books in the series, although that didn't turn out to be much of a problem. 

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is hesitant about getting into crime novels because, although you can play detective, you don't have to be chief of police to understand what's going on in the novel - though it's professional, it's not at all difficult for the Average Joe to interpret. Vanished is an awesome starting point for anyone who's unsure. But, be warned, the action goes on until the very last page...

Rating: ★★★★ 1/2

Great read, the only thing it really lacks is star quality and hype.