Review: Requiem by Lauren Oliver

Requiem by Lauren Oliver
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Once upon a time, I read Delirium and liked it.

Once upon another time, I read Pandemonium and liked it even more.

Now, in the present, I just finished reading Requiem and by golly am I shocked. Shocked by how bad this book was.

Seriously, what on earth happened here?

I really liked this series; I loved how Lena grew in the first book from someone who was all about rules and order, to someone who was in love. Then when Alex 'died' I liked that, because Lena had a very unrealistic view on love and started to understand why people wanted the cure. The cure, would keep this pain away from her.

Then the second book came and the book introduced a different more grown up Lena. Alex was gone, but Julian came and he was awesome. I liked him better than Alex, which should have been the first sign to me that I should stop caring about him because he gets totally shafted in Requiem. But that's jumping ahead. In the second book, Lena and Julian are lovey dovey and bam Alex returns and we've entered the forsaken love triangle realm of YA.

Requiem then comes and instead of getting only Lena's view on the world, we also see Hana. I liked Hana in the first novel, so I enjoyed seeing her here. She's different, now that she's cured, but her story is still a lot more interesting than Lena, who I've officially come to hate in this novel.

Before I get into her, here's what I thought about the book.

The Good:

Julian. He's still loveable and an all round great guy. He's also not childish and considerate of other people's feelings. He's awesome! I don't want him to be with Lena and I don't ship them, I simply am a fan of Julian.

Hana's plot was interesting too, her chapters were too short so we never got a better look into her world, but it was still good. Hana has to deal with getting married and the guilt that has plagued her since Lena left. Her husband to be isn't all that great and the more she learns about him, the more she begins to question everything else.

I also liked how sure of herself she was. She's cured and she likes it. Granted, I think if you're cured you'll like it either way, but I liked that she wasn't struggling with the loss of love. She accepted it and moved on. It is what it is and what's done is done.

But the best thing about Hana's story, there was no love triangle. In fact, there was no romance at all. It’s just Hana being cool.

The Okay:

I still don't really understand what the loss of love really does. Hana's parents seem to care about her a great deal, but I don't see how that's possible if there is no love. It isn't described much in this novel, compared to the others, so I suppose that's a good thing.

The Bad

There are spoilers ahead, so be warned. There's also a lot of ranting....lots.

Lena and Alex are, to quote GlaDos, horrible. You know, I think they might just be the worse couple that I've read in a YA novel thus far. They're childish, petty, and so incredibly stupid. Once Alex shows up, he sees Lena with Julian and decides to let her go. Because that's what good boyfriends do.

But in order to do this, he acts like an ass. He's rude, he's whiny, and he's just downright horrible to Lena. He tells her that he doesn't love her and that they've changed. Lena cries, he acts like he doesn't care. So what does Lena do? She runs into the arms of Julian. She needs comfort and to make Alex jealous. Alex, not one to be upped in the childish games, finds a love interest for himself in Coral. Lena hates her. Alex hates Julian. Coral likes Alex. Julian loves Lena.

Coral and Julian both get strung around while Alex and Lena continue their petty games.

Seriously, Alex and Lena just suck.

So they fight, they both run into the arms of others, then at the end of the novel Alex and Julian fight and Alex leaves. Before he does he leaves a note mentioning the story of Solomon. Get it, Lena is the baby and Alex is the mother who doesn't want her chopped up. See, he's such a caring guy that he's letting Lena stay with Julian. Awwww.

Once this happens, Coral tells Lena that Alex really loves her and Lena decides the best way to deal with this is become cold and distant with Julian. Julian, should cut his losses. Lena is only there for him when Alex isn't in the picture and when he's being a jerkwad.

And this is my biggest problem with love triangles. Why introduce another character whose only purpose is to be used like this? It's not fun, it's not cute. It's just depressing and makes the MC look really bad. Why do I need to see the MC kiss another guy, when I know that she's in love with someone else and would rather be with them? That's horrible. Just horrible.

It's even worse when the second guy is better than the first.

With Requiem, there is actually no point to Julian's character other than to play second string to Alex.

Now you may be thinking that I'm stressing way too much over this, but when Lena's chapters came this was the main storyline. There was some stuff about the rebels and invalids, but the main theme was Lena loves Alex, Alex loves Lena, but they're too childish to communicate.

I mean, there was even a conversation between the two where Lena tells Alex to go run off to Coral and he says, "You don't get it do you?" Of course she doesn't you moron! She can't read your mind, she only knows what you tell her and you keep telling her that you don't love her or need her in your life. What else is she suppose to think!

Honestly, if this is what love makes people do in this world, then I support the program to remove it from their lives.

Overall:

This is a disappointing ending to an otherwise good series. Requiem is just beyond disappointing and the love triangle was horrible. All it did was make me hate Lena and Alex, which is a shame, since I liked them in the first book. Even worse, is that it left me with a bad taste with regards to this trilogy  Instead of thinking, "Hey, this is good." I'll always think, "Lena and Alex *spitting noise*".

2 stars out of 5