Reviews with content warning for Police brutality - Delirium

Reviews tagging 'Police brutality'

maggieparedesauthor's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Trigger warning: murder of a dog.

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lonelylooper's review

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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sunflower7skull's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

OH MY GOD. WHAT WAS THAT ENDING. ugh i loved this book but the ending left me disappointed tbh... otherwise really interesting worldbuilding and narrative!

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mary_do_12's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

i should’ve known from the blurb on the back of the book how this was going to go. let me explain.

it was kind of a little cringe. and cliché.
in the beginning the main character — lena — is visibly influenced and driven by the lies the government feeds them. she seems like a very naive and oblivious character, who later starts to doubt her views of the world and society. of course, this is character development that is totally necessary. but, and hear me out, the lena we get to know in the beginning of the book is really frustrating and annoying to read about. this is mainly because it’s very obvious to the reader that the whole love as a disease thing is no more than propaganda.
then we meet alex, who is basically the exact opposite of lena. they fall in love (obviously) and then she proceeds to plan her entire life off of him.
the relationship felt flat and had nothing thrilling about it, except the fact that they had to keep it a secret, but at some point everything lena was doing could’ve gotten her jailed, institutionalized or killed.
there were no other characters that stirred any particular interest in me, i enjoyed reading about grace, but even hana felt like she had no depth except for good looks to me.
the plot was — to say it outright — flat as well. it was pretty predictable, but that‘s not to say there weren’t surprising turns.

the ending was admittedly frustrating, but kind of predictable as well so it wasn’t that frustrating.

one thing that you have to give to lauren oliver though, is that she wrote something entertaining. the problem is just that „entertaining“ doesn’t mean it’s a good book. at least for me it doesn’t.
i don’t necessarily regret reading this book, i just wouldn’t do it again.

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filipa_maia's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

It took me over two years to finish this book.. and no, it not because I'm a slow reader. I hate to 'DNF' books. I can't do it because my brain needs closure: finish a book, write a review and put the book away.

The story is not bad: a world where love is a disease and there is a medical procedure to cure it. People who fall in love are sick. Easy as that. Now, there is a bunch of plot holes to this narrative - if the medical procedure cures you from love, we are talking about ALL THE LOVE romantic and non-romantic. Right? Am i missing something here? Maybe there is something here that I'm not getting. And then this book is unnecessarily big. It could be way shorter, and way more interesting, if we didn't spend so much time reading, with immense detail, every single thought she has. That's why I had to put it down the first time - I was so bored.

Of course that me, being me, I need to read the second book because this one ends in a cliffhanger. I just need to know.

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kamrynkoble's review

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Middle school Kam bad taste. This was one of my favorites and it was SO fun to revisit it. It’s definitely one of the better YA dystopians. I found the audiobook narrator very annoying, but that’s no fault of the book.

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saucy_bookdragon's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

Delirium is a quintessential YA dystopia (derogatory).

It ticks off so much of what made the genre bad in the early 2010s that it at times reads like a parody. The world building is paper thin, falling apart with just one half brain cell of thought; the protagonist is a complete nobody bland piece of bread; and the love interest is just as bland and the romance lacks any chemistry.

With all that said, I didn’t actually begin really disliking this until I was done with the book. The prose was just okay and readable enough that I read most of it in one sitting, not so much entertained, more so I just had to finish for the book club where we specifically read bad books (this was my choice) (pretty sure all those bad books broke us so for the next few months we’re choosing good books again). I’m sure this book is just alright if you put literally zero thinking into it. Which honestly, that’s the core problem of these YA dystopias. They had some absolutely wild unrealistic dystopian premises and then ended up being shallower than a kitty pool with some truly shitastic world building.

Delirium’s premise really is laughable. It set the book up for failure from the beginning. “Love is a disease” is a bullshit premise, even for a fantasy, let’s be real. But then the book puts itself even further into the ground as it goes about failing to define what love actually is. It could’ve pulled itself together by perhaps drawing parallels to how interracial marriage was once illegal and/or how same-gender marriage was once illegal (two laws that are under threat in the US thanks to the asshats running the supreme court) (funnily, there is a terrifying line in this book that mentions how queer people are criminalized in this world and get The Cure which supposedly makes them no longer queer. This terrifying concept is never mentioned again). But nope, we’re going to stumble about and forget that there are real life situations where love is illegal and rebuild from the ground up! Let’s create another dystopia about cishet white people being oppressed in weird sci-fi ways and forget that there are marginalized people that are oppressed today!

Overall, great book pick on my part, me and the entire club hated it! Would recommend it if you want to read some bullshit!

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