Delirium -- Lauren Oliver

Dear Delirium,

I loved Before I Fall. So I was really, really excited to read you.

But.

I'm going to put you down for now. What I said up there is true -- it isn't you. It's me. I can't take any more dystopia right now. I've just read so much of it over the last couple of years, and you were the one to make me realize that I just can't take one more story about a girl realizing that her perfect, caring government is actually life-threateningly dangerous, but that she will Risk All For Love.

I made it just over a hundred pages in. I didn't even get to witness our heroine make her Big Realization about the love interest, though I think it was about to happen. While I felt that your Uglies/Handmaid's Tale/Stepford Wives/Matched world had potential (I liked that it was set in Portland, Maine -- I can be all smug about Alien Invasions and Zombie Apocalypses because the Bad Guys Never Bother with Maine, but when it comes to isolation, we've got it) and I enjoyed the revamping of Christian mythology, that wasn't enough to hold me. Not even Biblical cleverness and descriptions of the Old Port can make me want to read more dystopia.

I hear you protesting: Why, though, silly girl? Why would you even pick me up if you were so sick of my genre, of the building blocks of my very being?

I'll tell you: I didn't know. I didn't know I'd reached my fill. You, sadly, were the unlucky one to make me realize it. You were merely the messenger.

Until we meet again (maybe in a few years?),
Wishing you the best in the meantime,
Leila