Review: Requiem by Lauren Oliver

Requiem by Lauren Oliver

Delirium #3

Release Date: March 5^th, 2013

Number of Pages: 391

Publisher: HarperCollin’s Children Books

Source: Bought

GR - Amazon - BD - Chapters

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.

So many conflicting emotions came out of reading Requiem. But, let me start by saying that I loved this book, and that I feel Requiem was a beautiful ending to an amazing series. It wasn’t perfect. There were things I wished had been different, but I think Lauren Oliver delivered everything we could have asked for. She gave us what we needed to know, to have some sort of closure with the series and characters, but she also gave us hope for their future (does it sound weird for me to say?) The story might be over, but Lena still has things coming for her, a future to build, and that’s where hope is important for me with this series.

In Requiem, we get to follow two different points of view. We follow Lena out there in the wilds, and Hanna back home. Hana had the cure, and she is about to be married off to the future mayor. Even though Hana’s part weren’t my favorite, I liked seeing the other side of what life could be for them. Her narration gives us an insight into the mind of someone cured. Lena, on the other side, has to figure out how to survive, and to figure out what she really wants.

On one side, there’s Alex, who appeared at the end of Pandemonium, changed from all he went through. Despite everything, despite the fact that his actions sometimes broke Lena’s heart, I still liked him best. There is also another love interest for Alex introduced in this novel, making Lena’s choice even more heartbreaking for her. Then, there’s Julian, the boy who followed her into the wilds. One thing is for sure, Lauren Oliver knows how to create swoon worthy male characters.

Requiem was to me the perfect ending to a series I have loved from book one. Some readers might be disappointed with it, and it is often the case with the end of a loved series. Yet, I don’t think whether or not you will like this book will be decided only by whom you had been rooting for. I love that ending.

About the Author:

From GoodReads

Lauren Oliver comes from a family of writers and so has always (mistakenly) believed that spending hours in front of the computer every day, mulling over the difference between “chortling” and “chuckling,” is normal. She has always been an avid reader.

She attended the University of Chicago, where she continued to be as impractical as possible by majoring in philosophy and literature. After college, she attended the MFA program at NYU and worked briefly as the world’s worst editorial assistant, and only marginally better assistant editor, at a major publishing house in New York. Her major career contributions during this time were flouting the corporate dress code at every possible turn and repeatedly breaking the printer. Before I Fall is her first published novel.

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