REVIEW: Requiem by Lauren Oliver

Requiem (Delirium #3) by Lauren Oliver
Publication Date: March 5, 2013
Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books
Source: Book Purchased by Reviewer
Buy it at: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IndieBound

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Summary (from Goodreads):

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.

This book… ::Sigh::… THIS BOOK! It’s definitely been a roller coaster ride of emotions for me…to say the LEAST! After my dear friend Jenn recommended the first book in the series, Delirium, I was captured by its powerful story and plot…hook, line and sinker!

The second book, Pandemonium, was just as emotional as the first and last books, but had me feeling a sense of happiness throughout the book because of all that had unfolded. Then the end throws us for the shocker and that’s where we begin with this book.

I’ve been thinking about how this series could end and I have to say is…I was NOT impressed. I had several scenarios unfolding in my head and Lauren Oliver did not use ANY of them. I mean, hello?! I worked hard on this ending,…she should have too! Right?!

Oliver took this story and took it on a totally different level. And that’s not to say that the writing wasn’t good, because it was! And the story wasn’t bad…it just was so far off from what I had hoped it would be that it left me yearning for more. The ending was left so open and incomplete that I feel like I never got the closure I needed. Whether I approved of Lena’s decision in boyfriends it didn’t matter. I just needed that closure and Oliver highly disappointed me on this level. You can’t have a story centering on the idea that love is a disease and detailing all of the struggles that occur from the people who support the cure and people who didn’t support the cure, then completely ignore the fact that behind all the fighting and death and war there was a real love story that never had a happy ending.  I just can’t deal with that…I.JUST.CAN’T!

Then, of all other things to leave unfinished, we never know what happens to Hana. After all that happened with the betrayal,  the bomb, her horrible husband, and the final confrontation between her and Lena, we never even get to see THEIR happy ending.

And finally, Raven, that truly broke my heart. After all Raven has done for Lena and the relationship that unfolded between the two of them. Seeing the kind of strong, brave person that Raven was, Oliver betrayed her character by giving her the ending that she did. Raven definitely didn’t deserve that. She was too strong a person to go down the way she did. Not cool Lauren Oliver…NOT.COOL!

So, though this is definitely one of my favorite series EVER. I have to say that this particular book saddens me in a way that you will never understand.