Panic (Panic #1) by Lauren Oliver

Title: Panic
Classification: Young Adult
Genre: Realistic Fiction/Contemporary
Series: Panic
Format: Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins; First Edition edition (March 4, 2014)
ISBN-10: 0062014552
ISBN-13: 978-0062014559
Author's Website:  http://www.laurenoliverbooks.com/
Notes: I love the author's writing style, so I bought this one. 




Every year the town of Carp, New York runs an illegal game similar to Fear Factor with a get rich quick prize attached. The game is only open to that year's seniors and for some it is their only chance of escaping the poverty stricken town.

"No one knows who invented Panic, or when it first began. 

There are different theories. Some blame the shutting of the paper factory,which overnight placed 40 percent of the adult population of Carp, New York , on unemployment. (...) None of these stories is correct, however. Panic began as so many things do in Carp, a poor town of twelve thousand people in the middle of nowhere; because it was summer and there was nothing else to do.

The rules are simple. The day after graduation is Opening Jump, and the game goes all through the summer. After the final challenge, the winner takes the pot."

The only problem is that not everyone will come out of the games alive because this year the take is the largest ever. In the midst of the competition, two friends will enter hoping to change their circumstances. With alliances forged and broken, will their friendship survive the heat of the competition? More importantly, will they come out of the competition alive? With so much at stake, there is one thing you can bet on, not everyone will play fair and situations already dangerous will turn deadly. 

The last competitor standing will be the one to show no fear. Would you have what it takes to win?

This story had so much untapped potential, and while it was entertaining and I liked it, it could have been so much more. From the very beginning we know there are secrets about the game that only a handful of people know. The judges who remain anonymous throughout the competition also gain a substantial amount of wealth, and stories circulate of those who have escaped their fate by doing so. Greed, revenge, and hope are just some of the things which drive the competitors.

Heather never meant to enter the competition, but when her boyfriend dumps her just as she's about to tell him she loves him, she recklessly decides to risk it all and enter the competition. Her best friend, Nat, had already decided to enter and isn't too keen on having her best friend as competition. They end up making a pact that if either wins, they'll share the winnings with the other and they'll both escape.

Soon the two find themselves teaming up with Dodge who's motivation for entering is revenge. Dodge has a crush on Nat, and she uses that to her advantage luring him into a similar arrangement to the one she made with Heather. She's hoping to up her odds of coming out of the competition with something padding her pocket.

As the game progresses. the competition gets more intense as more and more competitors are eliminated and those still in the game begin to show just how far their willing to go to win. Unscrupulous behavior rears its ugly head, but I felt Ms. Oliver could have kicked this up a notch. Perhaps because it's a young adult novel, she just didn't want to go there? Additionally, some of the tasks assigned weren't what I would have expected and seemed to be more aimed at angering certain residents in the small town than testing a person's fearlessness. It made me wonder who was in charge of the overall competition and challenges and what was their motivation?

Overall, I gave this one 3 out of 5 roses. It was a book about friendship, trust, loyalty, greed, revenge, (in other words human nature)  and how we handle the fear and disappointments life throws our way. It's about growing up and realizing what's really important. I can see how some would compare this one to The Hunger Games, There are some definite similarities, but The Hunger Games way out classes this one in complexity and suspense. As for making this one into a movie? I think Hollywood may be on to something--the premise for the book was awesome. I do, however, highly recommend rewriting parts and making the story more gritty, developing the characters more, and making the contestants a tad more ruthless. I believe this is only the second book that I've ever said that about because usually I don't want Hollywood touching any part of a story. By the way, if you hadn't heard, Universal Pictures bought the movie rights to this one. We'll have to wait and see if it actually makes it to the big screen.

Pandemonium (Delirium, #2) by Lauren Oliver

• Title: Pandemonium (Delirium)
• Classification: Young Adult
• Genre: Dystopia
• Format: Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; Reprint edition (February 5, 2013)
• ISBN-10: 0061978078
• ISBN-13: 978-0061978074
Author's Website: http://www.laurenoliverbooks.com/

'Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go.

Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of you lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let your self go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness.'

Lena is now in the Wilds, but nothing is how she thought it would be or how she and Alex had planned. After watching Alex get gunned down right before her eyes, she ran and ran until she could go no further and passed out from the pain, exhaustion, and grief. When she came to, she was in a homestead and received her first real introduction to life in the Wilds.

"Everything you were, the life you had, the people you knew...dust."(...)" There is no before. There is only now, and what comes next."

The Wilds isn't pretty, it isn't cozy, truth be told, it's rather harsh, but Lena is free to be who she wants to be, be with who she wants to be and not what society dictates. She'll be forced to make her own way, a new life, and will question if she made the right choice in leaving. She'll find out what she's capable of and find herself, but most importantly, she'll learn to go on and  learn to love again.

'You can build a future out of anything. A scrap, a flicker. The desire to go forward, slowly, one foot at a time.'

This was another great book in the Delirium series. In Delirium, Lena caught the deliria and decided to run away with Alex to the Wilds. Alex was gunned down before he could escape, sacrificing himself so Lena could get away safely. Now Lena is in unknown territory, but she's taken in by a group of Invalids. She learns more about their society and her own.

The book is divided into two parts, the 'Then' and the 'Now' which alternate. The 'Then' section refers to the time when Lena first arrived in the Wilds and the 'Now' is several months later. As the story progresses, you can see the differences and similarities between the two periods of time. In the 'Now' Lena, Raven, and Tack have infiltrated society under aliases. I found the first chapter a bit confusing and wondered if the author did it on purpose to make us feel as confused as Lena when she first awoke in the Wilds. If so, it worked like a charm.

In the 'Now', Lena meets Julian, he's the teen spokesperson for the DFA. He's a very persuasive speaker and has a lot of followers. Lena and he are thrust together when they are both kidnapped and held captive. Being kept in close quarters combined with the stress of being held captive the two start to bond. As they make a daring escape that bond grows as they need to rely upon each other to make it out safely.

I must admit, at first I didn't like the 'Now' and 'Then' division, but as the story progressed, I liked seeing the contrast between the 'old' Lena and the 'new' one. In Delirium, Lena leaned on Alex. If not for him she'd never have left for the Wilds. When she finds herself alone in the Wilds without Alex, she needs to rely on herself and she starts to question things and think for herself. She grows into an independent woman who has opinions and who sees what the society she lived in didn't want her to see. The loveless utopia she was led to believe she lived in wasn't so perfect. A lot was hidden from people.

***MINOR SPOILER ALERT***Sidenote: I'm pointing this out because I think a lot of people will miss this unless someone does point it out.
Additionally, toward the end of the book, the author finally gives us an idea of why she divided the book up as she did. At one point, when Lena starts to fall for Julian, she starts to get images of the two, Alex and Julian, merging together as she tries to reconcile the feelings she had for Alex in the past with the new feelings she's beginning to have for Julian in the present. Additionally, she states, 'I have the feeling of looking at two mirrors that have been placed face-to-face, of being pushed from the past to the now and back again.' In a way, the past and present do sort of overlay and merge with each other at the end, and I liked how the author did this.
***END OF MINOR SPOILER***

Why is the book entitled Pandemonium? Well, the definition of pandemonium is a wild and noisy disorder or confusion; uproar. That suits the book well. Things start out and end in a very confusing and seemingly disorderly manner. Additionally, there is panic that the deliria is spreading and reaching 'pandemic' proportions which leads to the pandemonium in society.

Overall, I gave this book 5 out of 5 roses. I love the author's poetic writing style and the smart and clever way she put this story together. Plus, I loved the twist at the end which was unexpected and an awesome way to lend a book in a cliffhanger. I must confess, however, if I had read the series as the books came out instead of one right after the other, I'd probably be upset about not to knowing what happened next sooner. A very fun and well thought out series.

Order of the series:

Delirium (Delirium #1) by Lauren Oliver

•    Title: Delirium
•    Classification: Young Adult Fiction
•    Genre: Dystopia
•    Format: Paperback; 480 pages
•    Publisher: HarperCollins; Reprint edition (February 7, 2012)
•    ISBN-10: 0061726834
•    ISBN-13: 978-0061726835

   Author's Website: http://www.laurenoliverbooks.com/

'The most dangerous sicknesses are those that make us believe we are well.'

--Proverb 42, The Book of Shhh

L-O-V-E

Four little letters which mean so much and can be so powerful. People have written songs about it. Wars have been fought for it. People have killed for it. But what if an entire society decided to reject it? What if instead of seeing it as a rare and beautiful thing to grasp hold of, they saw it as something to be gotten rid of--a disease to be cured? What if they felt love was the root of all evil? 

Welcome to Lena's world. Where at the age of 18 all members of her society are required to have an operation to rid them of the possibility of ever falling in love. The thing Lena fears most is catching amor deliria nervosa. Unfortunately for her, her days of a disease free existence are numbered. Lena Haloway is about to fall undeniably head first in love. May God help her.

“Love: a single word, a wispy thing, a word no bigger or longer than an edge. That's what it is: an edge; a razor. It draws up through the center of your life, cutting everything in two. Before and after. The rest of the world falls away on either side.”

LOVE

"The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it and when you don’t."

If you think about the topic of this book too much you may find yourself chuckling or smirking. It is a hard premise/pill to swallow. Love as a disease? Just try to imagine yourself trying to describe this book to someone who hasn't read it. It isn't easy. I wonder how Ms. Oliver managed to sell a publisher on the idea? The story truly sounds far fetched. Ms. Oliver, however, dives head first into the society with her main character Magdalena "Lena" Haloway. She expertly skirts exactly how an entire society came to hate love, but gives us hints and clues as to how, at least through the eyes of the current government, it happened by seeding the story with bits and pieces of information at the heading of each chapter. In my humble opinion, only a master at the craft of writing could weave a tale such as this and make readers buy into it. After reading the series, I have no doubt that is exactly what Ms. Oliver is.

Lena is 17 years old and just months away from being cured. Her mother was never cured despite several operations to rid her of the awful disease. Lena has many fond memories of her mother, and it's obvious her death dramatically impacted her. I believe a part of her fears that, like mother like daughter, she too will be unable to be cured. I also think one of the main reasons Lena wants to be cured so badly is to rid herself of the pain and hurt she's felt all these years from the loss of her mother. The procedure is said to numb one's sense of feelings, such as love, and cleanse and clear the mind.

Hana, is Lena's best friend. In some ways the two are polar opposites. Hana is rich, while Lena comes from a poor family. Hana is popular, while Lena is popular only by her association with Hana. Hana is outgoing and gutsy while Lena is more likely to stay on the straight and narrow path. Hana is beautiful and, while I very much doubt this and guess it is due to being a teen and playing second fiddle to a best friend who everyone seems to view as perfect could make a gal feel this way, Lena believes she is not. Despite their differences the two get along famously and are almost as close as sisters. 

The society that Lena and Hana live in is touted as being perfect, but as the story unfolds, we start to see some cracks in it's supposedly flawless veneer and a darker side to this loveless society starts to emerge. The kind of cracks that a person might not notice if they aren't looking too closely. A side that is hidden away from the general populace. In the midst of it all Lena meets Alex. An older boy who has been cured and is, therefore, supposed to be safe. Alex, however, has a secret of his own and before Lena knows it, she finds herself in the midst of the one things she so desperately wished to avoid--amor deliria nervosa.

As I always say, the brilliance of a book is often hidden within the little details. An example would be the book of Shhh which stands for The Safety, Health, and Happiness Handbook and is a prime example of political propaganda. It's such a fun name for a handbook. Throughout the book below the chapter numbers, we are given bits and pieces of the liturgy of the handbook. Parts of it consist of reworked stories from the bible, altered to fit the society's ideals. Other sections deal with the symptoms and stages of the disease and how to protect yourself from the condition. Yet other sections consists of things to inspire and contain prayers. It's basically a handbook and bible all wrapped up in one book. 

Some, but not all, of my favorite quotes:

- 'I know that life isn't life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point- the only point- is to find the things that matter and hold onto them and fight for them and refuse to let them go.'

- “Everyone is asleep. They've all been asleep for years. You seemed ... awake." Alex is whispering now. He closes his eyes, opens them again. "I'm tired of sleeping.”

- 'Sometimes I feel as though there are two me's, one coasting directly on top of the other: the superficial me, who nods when she's supposed to nod and says what she's supposed to say, and some other, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams... Most of the time they move along in sync and I hardly notice the split, but sometimes it feels as though I'm two whole different people and I could rip apart at any second.'

- 'We stand there for one more moment, looking at each other, and in that instant I feel our connection so strongly it's as though it achieves physical existence, becomes a hand all around us, cupping us together, protecting us. This is what people are always talking about when they talk about God: this feeling, of being held and understood and protected. Feeling this way seems about as close to saying a prayer as you could get'

Overall, I gave this one 5 out of 5 roses. Ms Oliver has a beautiful and poetic type of writing style that I just adore. Her writing paints a picture with words and wraps you within her world. I absolutely adored the book and HIGHLY recommend it. I am presently kicking myself for not reading it sooner as I've owned the book since the book first came out. What was I thinking waiting so long? lol 

Order of the series: