Seventeen-year old Magdalena Ella Haloway lives with her aunt. She shares a room with her cousin's children, Grace and Jenny. All of the girls have lost their parents.
Lena is nervous about her upcoming evaluations. Her senior year is almost over, and the evaluation is the final test. The academic assessors analyze her strength and weaknesses, assigning her to a major and a school. The evaluation determines her list of 4 - 5 approved matches.
It's critical that I get paired with someone good. Jenny and Grace are years away from their procedures. If I marry well, in a few years it will mean extra money for the family. It might also make the whispers go away, singsong snatches that four years after the scandal still seem to follow us wherever we go, like the sound of rustling leaves carried on the wind:
Sympathizer. Sympathizer. Sympathizer.
Lena's best friend Hana begins to ask some serious questions. Questions that could get her into trouble. She's stopped caring about school, started talking back to her teachers.
"You know you can't be happy unless you're unhappy sometimes, right?" she whispers, and her voice is hoarse, as though she's just been crying.
Lena disagrees. She's glad the choice will be made for her.
As Lena goes through her evaluation, she can't help but think of her mother. Despite three separate procedures, her mother remained uncured. When she was six-yeras old, Lena was told her mother committed suicide.
I remember only the hot pressure of her fingers on my face in the nighttime and her last whispered words to me. I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.
Suddenly, things begin to change for Lena. Her evaluation is disrupted by Invalids, people who live in the Wilds - the unregulated land that exists between recognized cities and towns. They don't see love as a disease. And they aren't supposed to exist.
This doesn't make any sense, but as long as no one mentions the Invalids, everyone's happy. We're not supposed to know about them. They're not even supposed to exist; supposedly, all the people who live in the Wilds were destroyed over fifty years ago, during the blitz.
Delirium is an exciting read that reminded me of many other books, like Uglies, Matched, The Giver, Divergent, Forest of Hands and Teeth. The imagery is gorgeous and it's an entertaining read!
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars
*Mild language
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The second book is:
