Review of Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

I'm pushing aside the memory of my nightmare,
pushing aside thoughts of Alex,
pushing aside thoughts of Hana and my old school,
push,
push,
push,
like Raven taught me to do.
The old life is dead.
But the old Lena is dead too.
I buried her.
I left her beyond a fence,
behind a wall of smoke and flame.
Lauren Oliver delivers an electrifying follow-up to her acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Delirium. This riveting, brilliant novel crackles with the fire of fierce defiance, forbidden romance, and the sparks of a revolution about to ignite.
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After much grumbling about the sudden cover change so they could force people to buy second copies, I looked forward to reading Pandemonium. And then Hana arrived. It took me a LOT of effort to get this short novel but I wanted to read it a lot, Hana was an amazing best friend. But Lauren twisted her character into something bitchy and evil, which made no sense to me. And then I read some of Pandemonium and I wasn't impressed. Which is exactly why I'm writing this review months after the book has been released.

I got exactly what I expected from Pandemonium. Not much. The book didn't fit well with Delirium, it felt like a different book instead of another piece of the jigsaw and I did struggle with that a lot. I also kept getting the story mixed up with Matched slightly, different details kept getting meshed but not enough to completely confuse me!

Lena can't make up her mind about men. She moves on from Alex in a matter of months without trying to find him - she believes he isn't dead, so why wasn't she trying? She moves onto Julian very quickly, going through the crappy gasping and 'I shouldn't like him' crap that YA is full of these days. Girls, if you're gasping everytime a guy is near you, perhaps it's time to get yourselves checked for Asthma. She thinks about Tack a lot too, and would have probably got in his pants if given half the chance. Then there's Hunter, who's gay so doesn't get much of a mention. He's gay right? That's what I picked up anyway.

The story throws in loads of twists and turns - that we were all expecting. It was no surprise to me and I already guessed what would happen by the first 50 pages. Then Then and Now were interesting but the vital middle piece that connected to two was missing. It never bothered to mention how Lena ended up working for the resistance, which seems like a pretty big piece of the story to forget to write. Lena likes to remind us a lot that she's the NEW Lena, the old Lena is gone! She doesn't exist anymore! Over and over.

I'll definitely be reading the next book but I'm not exactly scraping my fingernails down Waterstone's doors yet.

3/5

Comments

  1. I had trouble with this one. I didn't like Lena at all, and I saw the ending coming miles away. I don't think she was slut, but I never bought into her romance with what's his name. I Loved Delirium though. The one thing that bugged me is we are never told why love is considered a disease to be cured, are we?

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  2. Your entire third paragraph is hilarious! I really liked the book but your review is still pretty awesome!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your review is hilarious! But it's sad to hear that you didn't enjoy this one. I haven't read it yet, but I plan to. Now, I'm kind of conflicted as what to expect. Anyway, great review!

    Rabiah
    Confessions of a Readaholic

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