ByMarlida

REQUIEM
BY LAUREN OLIVER
PUBLISHED: 2013
AVERAGE RATING: 3.75
391 PAGES
★★☆☆☆

After reading Pandemonium, the book before Requiem, I was kind of obsessed with finding out how it ended. (Which was pretty much the only reason I continued reading this book.)

Here’s my sort of recap for the trilogy, and what I really thought about Requiem, the last book in the series.
I started reading Delirium because I’d wanted to read it for such a long time. Since I’d already bought the books, I thought; why not just read them? So I read the books + the short stories.
Annabel was exciting, and it was kind of the reason why I thought; okay, I’m going to read the rest of the books.

Delirium was okay, I didn’t get super excited about it, because, well, it was not enough action for me, not enough revealings and stuff like that. So it was pretty much boring until well, Alex “died”. What I did like was the changing of Lena, the way she went from being like the perfect citizen till a Invalid and a sympathizer.

Hana was boring, all though I had been wanting to know more about her as a character, I didn’t get to know much. In the book, the author pretty much repeated everything that happened in Delirium, just from Hana’s perspective. And Hana was my favorite character, until; well, she revealed that Hana was the reason Alex “died”.

Pandemonium was the best book, because we were introduced to a new favorite character; Julian. Who eventually became Lena’s boyfriend or something, even though she couldn’t let go of Alex. It’s also exciting because we suddenly realize that Lena’s mother is still out there, after all this time.

Raven was mandatory, because after hating on Hana, I started loving Raven instead. She was this tough Invalid who knew exactly what she wanted, and sometimes; exactly what she needed to do.
Requiem was boring. It had its peaks, but I’m thinking that this was a crappy book. I was shocked, and angry that this was the ending. That this was where Lauren Oliver ended the trilogy. Because it wasn’t really a good book, and it wasn’t really a good ending. She ended it in the middle of action, suddenly, it was just poof, finished, like it was laughing in my face. So I started looking for an epilogue, but there was none.

Requiem became some kind of Twilight thingy, where Lena is so in love with Julian, but she still loves Alex, and they’re both in love with her, so she kind of wants to be with them both and it’s just sad and weird. I also thought that there would be some kind of clearing; like we got to know what happened to Portland and the rest of America. Did the resistance die? Or did they manage to make a new America? There were so many unanswered questions I was actually angry…

I know that I was probably not supposed to read Annabel before Delirium, but I just wanted to start with the short story before starting the trilogy. So, because it's just a short story, there's not much to tell - but I wanted to share what I felt while reading it.

First of all, the language Lauren Oliver uses in this short story is really good, I like the way she uses different comparisons to connect one meaning to another. I also like the way she goes from "now" and "then." It gets more exciting, and obviously it makes me want to read whatever's happening next. I felt like I got to know Annabel before I got to know Lena, the main character in the Delirium trilogy.

I also like the fact that I got to know more about Lena's mother and father for that sake before it all started in Delirium. I also think that because of the fact that I read "Annabel" before starting Delirium, the whole mystery around Lena's mother was kind of "gone" and therefore, maybe a little more boring?

Anyways, I liked it, and I read it in about 50 minutes, so it's a short story.

★★★☆☆