Book Review: Delirium

Delirium is written by Lauren Oliver, and is the first in the trilogy.

Summary:
Lena Holloway lives in a world where love is a disease. And when you turn 18, you receive the cure to wash the disease out of your body. After you get the cure, you can no longer feel the happiness, sadness, anger, or joy of love. Lena can't wait until she can get the cure. She can't wait to be rid of the thing inside her that killed her mother.
Until. She meets Alex.

Profanity:
Everything, but G****mn. The f word is used twice.

Romance:
Yeah. Okay, mostly just kissing. There is like 2 paragraphs in the middle of the book, that says they touched each other a lot, and that Lena's shirt came off on occasion. But, it's talked about in past tense, so it's not as bad as it could be.

Violence:
A dog dies, a dog tears a leg apart, people are clubbed and beaten, the inside of a jail cell is described in length.

Suggested Age:
14+

My Opinion:
I have heard mixed reviews about this book. I spent an hour last night debating as to which book to buy, and this one finally won out.
I really really liked it. There's nothing too unique about Oliver's writing style, but her word choice is flawless. Lena was very relatable (at times, I did feel like shaking her though), and Alex is just... awesome. I did feel he was a little too perfect though. Like he was inhuman or something.
The plot was really great, I followed it easily enough.
I was very pleasantly surprised at the amount of The Book of Shh! (The book with all the rules for the country in it) in the book. I thought it was very neat. That being said, I would have loved to have known more, not only about the Wilds, but also about the leaders of Lena's country. They only came up like, twice.
Also, talk about a cliffhanger. You thought the Hunger Games left off on one... you were sorely mistaken...
Anyway. I wish the 2 paragraphs (up in Romance) were not in the book. Because, it so easily could have been taken out, and if they were, my suggested age would have been, like, 12. But because of like 7 sentences that didn't really go with anything, I had to raise the age by two years. Yeah. Frustrating.
Oh! So, I don't know if y'all know this about me, but when it comes to books, I simply cannot be surprised. I just figure the ending/plot/surprising twists and turns pages before I get there. I don't know why.
But! The surprise in this book completely shocked me. Talk about awesome.
One of my favorite quotes was really simple: "I'd rather die my way, than live yours."
And maybe it was because it was like right in the middle of a super gory fighting scene, and so when she thinks this, it's like time just freezes. It was pretty neat.
Overall, it was a good book. I'm looking forward to the next one.