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“It's been sixty four years since the president and the Consortium identified love as a disease, and forty three since the scientists perfected a cure ” This is the opening line of the book Delirium Delirium was written by Lauren Oliver in 2011 and is the first book in a trilogy. Not only has Delirium been translated into around 30 different languages, but it is also a New York Times bestseller The book is a fast paced mix of fantasy, dystopia, and romance and as said by The New York Journal of Books, “Oliver’s deeply emotional and incredibly well honed prose commands the reader's attention and captures their hearts ”

Lauren Oliver is an American author, known for writing several young adult books such as Replica, Vanishing Girls, Panic, the Delirium trilogy, and Before I Fall, which later became a major motion picture Before I Fall was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2017, and was released by Open Road Films in the same year. Oliver was born in Queens, New York and currently lives in Brooklyn. She went to New York University and got her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing there Currently, Lauren Oliver is a narrative consultant for Illumination Entertainment where she writes TV shows and features for various production companies.

Delirium is set in the future and begins with a bit of history about the United States, where many things have changed The government has decided that love, or Amor Deliria Nervosa, is a disease and must be controlled and gotten rid of. So, on the citizen’s 18th birthday, they must receive ‘the cure’ to prevent them from having the disease (it is implied that ‘the cure’ is a brain surgery procedure done by the scientists of the government). The protagonist, Lena, is 17, and can’t wait to get ‘the cure’ because her mom killed herself 12 years prior after the cure didn’t work on her However, one day she meets a boy, Alex, and soon falls in love with him. She discovers that he doesn’t live in the boundaries of the US; instead, he lives outside of the electric fence and is a part of a rebellion against the government and their ideals He tells her that he and many other people faked the mark of the cure but stayed in society to cause small acts of rebellion. As Lena learns more about what ‘the cure’ really is and what actually happened to her mom, she begins to question everything that she’s been told

Through Delirium, Oliver is able to touch upon the different types of love, not just romantic, but also between family and friends She makes it clear that love is actually what keeps us going daily, and without it, there would be no passion in life. Love is everywhere and we honestly don’t realize it as much as we should The book also brings up the fact that while love causes us happiness, it can also cause pain. Oliver highlights that those dark emotions are a part of everyday life and that, while they would disappear if we couldn’t love, so would the positive emotions I believe that the message is that in order to experience true happiness that comes from love, we must also be able to deal with the pain and struggle.

Delirium is appropriate for middle school readers and older readers as well, but it is definitely not a stimulating read due to how it’s written The story itself was engaging but the simplistic way in which it was written became predictable after a while, pulling me out of the story. Because of this, I did not like it enough to buy the other books in the series

I recommend this book for people who like the dystopian genre but also a lot of romance. It was easy to be pulled into Lena’s world and I really liked the book’s message It was interesting to see how much the characters (especially Lena) developed from naive and obedient to aware and rebellious by the end of the novel. There were a ton of plot twists which is always great and the first book ends on a cliffhanger (why do authors do this to us?!).

Delirium is an easy novel that serves its purpose as a fun, engaging, and good airplane read I would give it three out of five stars and would recommend it to those seeking a simple dystopian/romance novel.