Requiem (Delirium #3) – Lauren Oliver

Title: Requiem (Delirium #3) by Lauren Oliver
Publishing Info: March 5, 2013 by HarperCollins
Genres: Dystopian, Young Adult
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // GoodreadsDate Completed: February 24, 2013
Related Posts: Annabel (Delirium #0.5), Before I Fall, Vanishing Girls, Panic, Broken Things

    Now an active member of the resistance, Lena has transformed. The nascent rebellion that was underway 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 infiltrate the borderlands to stamp out the rebels.
As Lena navigates the increasingly dangerous terrain of the Wilds, her best friend, Hana, lives a safe, loveless life in Portland as the fiancée of the young mayor. Requiem is told from both Lena and Hana's points of view. They live side by side in a world that divides them until, at last, their stories converge.

** This is a spoiler-free review for REQUIEM but will contain spoilers if you have not read Delirium or Pandemonium **

I was SO NERVOUS to start REQUIEM!!!! I’ve heard quite a few mixed reviews from fellow bloggers and I was positively terrified to read the conclusion to one of my favorite trilogies/series, especially when quite a few people were disappointed in it. So where I my opinion shake out? I liked it more than I liked PANDEMONIUM but it still didn’t compare to when I first fell in love with DELIRIUM. So let’s talk!

One of the things I was the most apprehensive and yet curious about was the fact that REQUIEM is alternating chapters between Lena’s POV and Hana’s POV. I read the short story about Hana and was quite intrigued but I wasn’t quite sure how the book would shake out hearing her side of things. When it came down to it, I really enjoyed the alternating narrators. From Hana we get the view of Portland through the eyes of a Cured. Everything we see is much more organized and calm versus Lena’s passion and her messy, ferocious approach to life in the Wilds. The reason I loved the dual POVs so much was because we’re back in the Portland I knew from DELIRIUM again. I got really lost in PANDEMONIUM for a while because of the unfamiliar settings (something which happens to me often in book two…) and I felt like I was anchored back to the place I first met these characters and all of the emotions I had when reading the first book. It also pains me a little to say that I kind of liked Hana’s story line better than I liked Lena’s. I still felt a little lost in the Wilds and I think with Hana being anchored in Portland and unraveling a mystery of her own, I actually latched onto her story more than Lena’s more chaotic one.

Another thing I was nervous about was Lena’s affections for both Julian and Alex. I’ve been Team Alex all throughout PANDEMONIUM but guys… Julian start to grow on me and I did NOT see that coming. Lauren Oliver does a great job of making the reader like Julian; he’s a good guy who got himself tangled with a girl who loves someone else and sometimes you can’t help but feel for him. My feelings actually got a bit mixed up and turned around throughout REQUIEM. I wanted to root for both guys, but at the same time, my heart was still on Alex’s side. It’s a very interesting love triangle (FOR ONCE) and it’s one that I feel was actually done well because this may be the first time I almost had a hard time picking which guy to root for!

As far as the plot goes? All dystopians seem to reach a point nowadays where the fight vs. the “Society” gets a little too political for me. Since we’re seeing REQUIEM from the eyes of two girls who are closely related to the political side but still somewhat on the fringes of it, the whole resistance movement and constant battle made it a bit easier to stomach. We see a lot of battles that are lesser parts of the war and REQUIEM leads us to how this whole war wraps up. I won’t say anything specifically about the end, but what I WILL say is that it all ended a bit too quickly for me. Lena & Hana are obviously in their own worlds, telling their own stories, but I was constantly anticipating when they would collide and intertwine. I wanted a little more interaction between the two stories to really tie the whole book together. Once they finally do meet up, I was like, “NO WAY there’s still so much that needs to happen and there aren’t that many pages left!!!” I was loving the action that was going on and I wished we had spent a little more time there than in the Wilds, yaknowhatImean?

Anyway, overall, I liked the book — not quite to the point of adoring it like I did with the first book, but of course it’s a must-read for fans of the series. I can see where other people were disappointed but I did still enjoy it, even though there were a lot of things I was disappointed with.

Lena: As much as I always love Lena, I will always miss the Lena of Delirium – What made that book so great was watching her transform from naive and cautious to taking a huge chance on Alex. Throughout Pandemonium and Requiem, obviously we see a hardened Lena and of course I still love her but it’s still just never quite as enjoyable as the first book. I did see a lot of REAL emotions come from her though, especially regarding her decisions between Julian and Alex so that really made Requiem great.
Hana: I loved hearing more from Hana in her own point-of-view instead of reading things as Lena sees them. Even though Hana is Cured, I really think we see a great range of feelings from her and even if they’re not feelings, they’re calculated ideas and thoughts which are carefully broken down into logic. The logic may not always be what Hana wants to hear, but that makes the story more exciting as well. I think it’s great to see a POV from a Cured and see exactly how the cure works and affects emotions. Hana may not be typical of all Cureds, but either way, I loved hearing from her. I really felt like her story was actually more interesting than Lena’s!

Read it

If you’ve made it this far in the series, might as well complete the read! I’m still pretty disappointed in the ending and it wasn’t my favorite, but it’s worth the read to see how the trilogy ends!

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