Delirium

The Hook: 

In an alternate United States, love has been declared a dangerous disease, and the government forces everyone who reaches eighteen to have a procedure called the Cure. Living with her aunt, uncle, and cousins in Portland, Maine, Lena Haloway is very much looking forward to being cured and living a safe, predictable life. She watched love destroy her mother and isn't about to make the same mistakes.

But with ninety-five days left until her treatment, Lena meets enigmatic Alex, a boy from the Wilds who lives under the government's radar. What will happen if they do the unthinkable and fall in love?

My thoughts:

The problem with trilogies (and YA authors, especially YA dystopian authors, love to commit to trilogies) is that the first book is always the best book and those of us that read a lot of these dystopian YA books (well I will speak for myself) expect the first one to be the best and wait to be disappointed, but read the second book anyway. Hunger Games, Divergent, City of Bones, Girl of Fire and Thorns. . .

That said, this is a good first book to this trilogy. The dystopian society, Portland, has a cure for love and all of its horrible side effects so Lena looks forward to this procedure until she meets a boy. Yes, you know the rest, but it is still worth reading and the two bombshells at the end of the book are worth reading the second book Pandemonium. 

I will not, however read the 1.5, 0.5, 1.1, 2.0 books that came after the trilogy. I think young readers who are really hesitant to let go of a world find value in authors who continue stories through other characters. I'm old and although I enjoy YA books and teach teachers who need to understand the YA genre, I believe that there is power in inference and letting readers have more autonomy to create the lives of characters that belong now to the reader rather than the author. Isn't that what reading is all about?