Review: Requiem by Lauren Oliver

Title: Requiem
Author: Lauren Oliver
Published: March 5th 2013
Source: Purchased
Genre: Young Adult Dystopian
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Caution: Contains spoilers!

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.

My Thoughts:

Okay. First off, I'm really happy that this was one of the dystopian series I really got into. Delirium and Pandemonium were exquisite and really sucked me into the world in numerous ways. I was so very excited to read the final book and see what happens to Lena and everyone she knows. I was hoping for something just as wonderful as the first two books. However, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I would be.

Writing this review is going to be extraordinarily hard without giving away spoilers, and as much as I want to NOT give away spoilers, I kind of HAVE to so that I can express my thoughts clearly. SOOO. If you haven't read Requiem yet (and don't want the ending ruined), this WILL contain SPOILERS. Stop reading now. Okay? Thanks!

That being said... After the "surprise" ending in Pandemonium where Lena gets the shock of her life that her first love, Alex, is still alive, I knew exactly how the story was going to go. I even said that in my review of Pandemonium. It's like every other love triangle, there's always a clear winner... not the one that is clear in YOUR own eyes, but the one that is made OBVIOUS by the author. They may TRY to make it seem like there's a possibility that she's going to choose the other guy, but trust me, she won't. As much as I adored Julian, I knew he was Lena's second choice from the start and the only reason she was staying with him throughout was just because she felt like she had to AND because Alex acted like he didn't want her. So, as I was reading about her internal struggle, it was just painful to me because I was going to be disappointed in that aspect.

Other than that whole ordeal, the story was pretty good. Hearing about the world of being cured through Hana's perspective was intense. She's so broken post-operation, all her thoughts just feel like she's a robot, going through the motions so as to not make anyone upset. When she discovers the conspiracies and starts questioning what is right and wrong, it makes me happy because you know that the real Hana is still in there, hanging on by a thread.

Requiem, although it didn't exactly end in the way I wanted it to, was still a pretty good ending to the series. The way everything was pulled together in the end, while it wasn't some sort of "everything gets worked out" endings, it worked for me. It wasn't my favorite book in the series, that award still goes to Pandemonium, Lauren Oliver's beautiful writing still made up for it.

My Rating: