ARC Review: Delirium (Delirium #1) by Lauren Oliver

Before scientists found the cure, people thought love was a good thing. They didn’t understand that once love - the deliria - blooms in your blood, there is no escaping its hold. Things are different now. Scientists are able to eradicate love, and the governments demands that all citizens receive the cure upon turning eighteen. Lena Holoway has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured. A life without love is a life without pain: safe, measured, predictable, and happy. 

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena does the unthinkable: She falls in love.

Hardcover, 440 pages
Expected publication: February 1st 2011 by HarperTeen
Description: Goodreads.com


REVIEW

I'm still stunned over the ending.

If you have read Before I fall you already know about Lauren Oliver's brilliancy, if you have not then you should read it immediately.

From the start I knew Delirium would be just as good or better than Before I fall. It turned out better. Imagine a world without love, a world were even the slightest filial show of affection is frown upon. Thats' where Lena lives, a world full of cold people who see Love, or Amor Deliria Nervosa, as a disease.

And even if it seems unbelievable for such a place, Lauren Oliver pulls it off. You truly believe people don't love, that they see it as a disease.

At first, I saw Lena a little cowardly, but then as the story goes by we understand, she is terrified of the disease for it was the death of her mom who never stopped loving Lena's father.

I loved Lena, she is the kind of character you sympathize from the start and you just like her more and more as the book goes by and who by the end you just adore.

Delirium is full of sentiments, good ones and bad ones, but as the book itself portrays we can't enjoy the good stuff if you don't bear the bad stuff.

Overall, I suffered a strong case of Amor Deliria Nervosa toward this book and EVERYONE should read it because as sweet and amazing as it is, it can also teach you a lot, like don't trust regulators!

Anyway, can someone give me the sequel? I need to read it pronto.

5 STARS!!!!

Review: The Mermaid's Mirror by L.K. Madigan

Lena has lived her whole life near the beach — walking for miles up and down the shore and breathing the salty air, swimming in the cold water, and watching the surfers rule the waves — the problem is, she’s spent her whole life just watching.

As her sixteenth birthday approaches, Lena vows she will no longer watch from the sand: she will learn to surf.

But her father — a former surfer himself — refuses to allow her to take lessons. After his near drowning years ago, he can’t bear to let Lena take up the risky sport.

Yet something keeps drawing Lena to the water . . . an ancient, powerful magic. And one morning Lena catches sight of this magic: a beautiful woman — with a silvery tail.

Now nothing can stop Lena from seeking the mermaid, not even the dangerous waves at Magic Crescent Cove.

And soon . . . what she sees in the mermaid’s mirror will change her life forever.

Description: Goodreads.com 

Paperback: 336 pages

Published:  October 4th 2010 by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

REVIEW

The Story: A girl who has felt a deep connection with the sea finds herself restricted by her father's fear over a mysterious accident.
I am a big fan of mermaids, I always found them enthralling so I was very excited when I got this book. 
But I must admit it was very clichéish at times.
The Mermaid's Mirror is a great book for sea lovers and it's about a girls decision. I had great fun reading it, although not a huge fan of how things ended up. 
Complain: I did not believed how fast love developed between the main character and another character, but it was believable enough to make us want to read more. 
Overall, the Mermaid's book was not a great book, but a good one and a quick, nice read. And I sure hope there's a sequel to wrap things up.


 3 stars!

Review: Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez

  

 A mysterious and haunting tale of romance and murder, that begins with the marriage of a man and a woman in love. But when he inexplicably mistreats his beloved on the night of the wedding, he is in turn murdered by her brothers, and we are left with a strange sense of inevitability and passions gone terribly awry.
Description: Goodreads.com

Paperback: 120 pages

Published: October 7th 2003 by Vintage 

REVIEW


One of the most respected and celebrated novella of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It narrates the chronicle of Santiago Nasar and how his dead came to be in the full knowledge of the whole town who did nothing to stop him because his dead was so well known they all assumed he knew it too. Killed for a crime he did not commit his story is narrated by his best friend.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez astonished me unlike any other writer with so few pages. The guilt of the town and the secrecy of Angela Vicario of a secret that is never reveal, join together in this beautiful read.
Overall, anyone who has enjoyed his novels before can delight with this novella and his new readers can relish in the new found author.


 -- 5 STARS!

Review: One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau

Jackie has a map of the city on the wall of her bedroom, with a green pin for each of her trees. She has a first-kiss tree and a broken-arm tree. She has a car-accident tree. There is a tree at the hospital where Jackie’s mother passed away into the long good night. When one of them gets cut down, Jackie doesn't know what to do but she doesn't let that stop her. She picks up the biggest rock she can carry and puts it through the window of a car. Smash. She intends to leave before the police arrive, but they're early.

Ann is Jackie’s best friend, but she’s got problems of her own. Her mother is chained up in the basement. How do you bring that up in casual conversation? "Oh, sorry I've been so distant, Jackie. My mother has more teeth than she’s supposed to, and she won't eat anything that’s already dead." Ann and her sister Margaret don't have much of a choice here. Their mother needs to be fed. It isn't easy but this is family. It’s not supposed to be easy. It'll be okay as long as Margaret and Ann still have each other.

Add in a cantankerous old man, his powerfully stupid dog, a headless ghost, a lesbian crush and a few unsettling visits from Jackie’s own dead mother, and you'll find that One Bloody Thing After Another is a different sort of horror novel from the ones you're used to. It’s as sad and funny as it is frightening, and it is as much about the way families rely on each other as it is about blood being drooled on the carpet. Though, to be honest, there is a lot of blood being drooled on the carpet.

Description: Goodreads.com 

Paperback: 160 pages

Published: May 1st 2010 by Ecw Press

REVIEW

One Bloody Thing After Another is not what it seems, Joey Comeau surprise us with a fictional tale filled with gore and death. 

Never has a book affected me so deeply. Joey Comeau enters in the person's soul and unveils their true nature. 

A true master of horror that leaves you hanging with every word. And a truly chilling read.

 - 4stars!