Review: Requiem by Lauren Oliver

I don't really know where to start with this review other than to just say right now, I worship Lauren Oliver. If she ever stopped writing YA books, it would be a loss from which I could probably never recover. I worship her so much I am actually probably going to read her adult book even though adult books are sometimes the bane of my existence.

Requiem is not perfect, but it is my perfect book-- and to be honest, my main problem with it is that there was not enough of it. It's right up there with Mockingjay (appropriate, considering they're both the last book in their respective heart-pounding dystopian/utopian trilogies). Bittersweet is my favorite kind of ending-- I mean, happily-ever-after is great for books like Anna and the French Kiss, but it hardly seems fitting for series in which death and destruction run rampant.

Now, to be clear, I was terrified of this book. I've been waiting for a month to get my hands on this ARC, hardly able to contain my excitement, but the entire time an evil fear lurked underneath the excitement. I had skimmed reviews from other people who had read ARCs, and the general consensus seemed to be "unimpressed."

Now I'd like to ask those people what in the world they want. Because if there is one word to describe how I felt after finishing Requiem, it was impressed.

Allow me to start, as usual, with the characters. I shall write them in open-letter format because after the amount of time I spent with them yesterday (and have, for the past two years), I see no weirdness in addressing them personally.

Lena Haloway:

Girl, you rocked this book. Remember at the beginning of Delirium when you were totally supportive of the cure and you were like "fight back?! Pshaw, yeah right"? Look how far you've come. As much as I resent the fact that your character development was basically the entire focus of Pandemonium, I have to appreciate what it did for you in Requiem. You've finally come into your own and learned how to balance fightin' Lena with lovin' Lena. You make all the right decisions for yourself and even when I started to go all NO LENA STOP, I understood why you had to make those decisions, and my NO LENA STOPs weren't so much for you as for myself. My shipper heart could not stand by and watch certain things without getting a little riled up. But in the end, you discovered the truth about yourself and your relationships and I stopped wanting to yell. Well, I actually still wanted to yell, but this time it was YES MORE OF THIS instead of NO LENA STOP.

Hana Tate:

In Delirium, I cared about Hana Tate, Lena's Best Friend. In Requiem, I cared about Hana Tate. Parts of me want to punch you in the face, and parts of me want to hug you. How can a cured character be so complicated? You're singing the praises of the cureds one minute, and the next minute you're risking your reputation-- and, consequently, your life-- to help the family of the best friend you betrayed. The measures you take to find out the truth, to still be Hana Tate even while the countdown to Hana Hargrove is on, are a reminder of who you once were-- that they can try to mute love, emotions, personalities, but the strong ones will never be silent. I refuse to believe that you do it out of guilt. You're a jealous wench who has no idea what she wants, but you're not heartless. You're cured, but you still love. They cannot take it.

Alex Sheathes:

Poor, tortured baby Alex. I missed you so much in Pandemonium, and I still kind of miss you. I miss Delirium-you, who is in my head as full of life and hope, dashed with realism, with a sprinkle of perfect hair and a backdrop of sunlight making your entire existence glow. But alas, the worst things happen to those kinds of characters (here, ladies and gentlemen, we have another example of how similar Requiem is to Mockingjay), and Delirium-you has been buried by this new Alex with the scar on your face and the almost-black hair and the gloomy presence. And, ahem, I still love you. Because you're still Alex, you still know right from wrong, you still fight for what you believe in, and you still love Lena no matter what words come out of your mouth to contradict this. Because you understand how Lena feels and give her what she doesn't even realize she needs-- you sacrifice your own happiness for hers repeatedly (metaphorically, you let go of the baby when the other mother clings and agrees to cut it in half). Oh, and because you finally get up the nerve to look Julian in the eye when he won't even return the favor. [Spoiler: And then when you're fighting and Lena tells you to stop, you agree. Then Julian charges you off-guard and you take the fall for beating him up when he totally deserved it.] Alex Sheathes, moody looks good on you.

Julian Fineman:

Oh, Julian. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't like you. I didn't like you in Pandemonium and I don't like you now. But you sure did try, didn't you? You tried to make me like you. You gave Lena her space when she needed it, you gave her comfort when she needed that, and you tried to prove yourself a fighter time and time again. But you can't do these things and then prove yourself a coward time and time again, and still expect me to like you. When you refuse to look your "opponent" in the eye while he's staring directly at you, you're a coward. When you attack someone who's walking away and then go all wounded-puppy-dog when they retaliate, you're a coward. Go ahead and get offended when the rest of the Invalids still treat you like an outsider, but I don't feel sorry for you. You're a slightly less boring character than you were in Pandemonium, but the non-boring traits you've acquired are not helping your case.

Now, moving on to the plot. It was intense. Things move pretty quickly, and you don't get a lot of time to sit there and wonder where it's going. It doesn't focus too much on the relationships, and everything that happens brings the series back to the characters and setting with which it all started. Instead, the relationships are kind of a deep undertone throughout the entire plot, making all of the stakes higher than ever. This is the kind of thing that makes it my perfect book, along with...

The ending. My initial reaction was, WAIT. THAT'S IT? BUT I WANT MORE. There is easily enough room in the end for a fourth book. Not very much is actually resolved in a blatant way-- instead, it's riddled with symbolism. The future is unclear, but it no longer seems so hopeless. To me, this is the most realistic way to handle everything that's happened in the past three books: when you've got two books that end with serious clawing-at-your-eyeballs-WTF-moments, you can't very well end the third one with a neat little bow. All you can do is hope things are clear enough, and to me, they were.

And if you're wondering about the love triangle thing... Well, it was not so much a choice as a realization that one relationship just couldn't compete with the other. You could say Lena chooses, but really she just lets go of something that could not go anywhere (Again: Mockingjay, anyone?).

Oh, and the writing? I feel like thus far in my review I've been pretty good at not going all fangirly, but this is about to change. This is the part where I am 100 percent fangirl and not ashamed enough to hide it. Can someone explain to me how Lauren Oliver packs so much punch in such SMALL SENTENCES? How she uses such simple words to BREAK ME APART AND PUT ME BACK TOGETHER? THE WOMAN IS MAGICAL AND IT IS NOT FAIR. I would give examples, but it's so much better when you read them for the first time in context. WARNING: Do not stand while reading, for you may collapse. Keep sustenance nearby.

Overall Rating:

★★★★★ or 4.5/5 stars if I take away half a star because I want more of certain things. Delirium is probably still my favorite book in the series, but I feel like a good portion of my love for that book is pure nostalgia for the good ol' days in Portland with Alex and Lena and Hana and sunshine and 37 Brooks and parties and opening your eyes to good things instead of bad things.