BOOK REVIEW: Requiem by Lauren Oliver

Requiem by Lauren Oliver

Genre: Dystopian/Young Adult Fiction

My Rating: ★★

Goodreads Page

Goodreads Summary:

They say that in the old days, love drove people to madness. The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don't.

**Spoiler-Free Review**

Requiem was dubbed the “exciting finale” to Lauren Oliver’s Delirium Trilogy when it was released earlier this year, seemingly promising to tie up all the loose ends and offer an exciting conclusion to the previous two novels: Delirium and Pandemonium. The trilogy offers a new and interesting take on both the idea of love and to dystopian fiction. Normally, I’m not really into the whole love story but in her first novel, the idea actually seemed to work. The novel is set in a world where the totalitarian government teaches that love is a disease called amor deliria nervosa and, at the age of 18, a mandatory surgical cure is used on everyone so they can never love and be infected with the disease.

I really loved this idea (ironically) and it was so different to any other dystopian fiction. After having read the previous two novels, and enjoyed them both, I was incredibly excited for Requiem; to finally know what happened to the characters and how the war between the cured and normal was resolved.

In the first book the characters were rather two dimensional in my opinion but the story was very well told. This incredible story progressed even further in the second novel where there was also a sudden character growth and the storyline became even more complicated and exciting, which made you care about everything in the books. However, Requiem seemed to regress, resulting in every character becoming less likeable and too two dimensional. Even worse? The actual storyline.

The entire book felt consumed by a love triangle and their petty squabbles rather than focusing on the society and war which had been built up in the previous book. This led to an even worse ending, that I was just stunned at. The entire novel had felt as though it was building up to a big climax, similar to The Hunger Games, where you discovered what happened to both the characters and the world they live in. Requiem had none of this. It ended with far too many loose ends that I couldn’t even count them. Furthermore, it lacked any closure or revelation about what had happened to the characters. Perhaps this was to make room for another book to come out? However, as far as we know, there isn’t.

Sorry to ruin this novel for anyone who has not yet read it, but I felt like it had to be known what a disappointment this was as an apparently “exciting finale” – which was neither exciting nor conclusive. I still really enjoyed the first two books in this series and would wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone, but be warned, the last novel might leave you more disappointed than if you never read it!

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