If you’ve been at all interested in the OH SO POPULAR dystopian YA novel series trend over the past few years, chances are some SEO generator has suggested that you might like Delirium by Lauren Oliver. If you haven’t read it, now is great time. The trilogy just wrapped up with the third book, and there is a TV show in the works. If you don’t have time to read it, let me recap a bit.

REVIEW OF BOOK ONE: I THREW IT ACROSS THE ROOM.

Delirium is one of the first YA books I picked up on my own, based simply on the summary. I didn’t have any friends that had read it yet, and I wasn’t trolling book blogs looking for reviews. I saw it in the store, read the jacket, bought it and read it in a couple of days. In fact, this shot of me reading Delirium was my Goodreads profile picture for a long time (mostly because I look WAY intensely focused and hello – Ray Bans and Vans).

The premise of Delirium is that LOVE is the cause of all evils in the history of the world – war, genocide, theft, hatred – and therefore has been systematically eradicated by science. The government requires every citizen to essentially be lobotomized at the age of 18 to “cure” them of the Deliria, of love, passion and (essentially) free will.

Lena, the main character, is actually looking forward to the cure. It means she will be sure of her future, she will be matched with an acceptable guy, get married, have the government mandated correct amount of children, and maybe – just maybe – she’ll stop thinking about her mother, who was taken away when she was young for basically not getting enough of the cure.

Then she meets Alex. Cue insta-love. Alex is safe (meaning he has the three-pronged scar on his neck that indicates he’s been cured), but she still is not supposed to be interacting with boys. But she can’t help herself. He seems to know things, and she’s pretty sure he winked at her. Cured people don’t bother doing things like winking. They’re too busy being zombies.

What ensues is a really great-paced story about falling in love when you think love is wrong, and deciding it is worth it. With Alex’s help, Lena begins to understand the evils of the society she lives in, and they make plans to escape to The Wilds (or the ungoverned land outside the fence of her city). When I picked up this book I had NO IDEA it was the first in a series, so already, you are ahead of me there. Let’s just say I got to the ending, HURLED the book across the living room, immediately tweeted Lauren Oliver to yell at her, and then felt sheepish when she told me it was a trilogy. It’s a cliffie, in other words. But a great one.

Review of Book Two: I THREW IT ACROSS THE ROOM.

The second book, Pandemonium, startled me when I first picked it up. It opens in a place and time you don’t understand and can’t relate to the end of the first book. I wanted it to pick up RIGHT WHERE BOOK ONE ENDED BECAUSE I NEEDED ANSWERS BECAUSE OF REASONS.

But what Oliver wrote instead is a really great follow up. Lena is faced with a whole new set of conditions, a brand new setting, and a completely different purpose. But of course, fighting against the tyranny that cuts the love out of everyone’s brains is still Mission: Impossible. This second book is less girl-figuring-herself-out and more girl-against-the-world.

And we are introduced to Julian … cue love triangle. Lena’s feelings for Alex are always present in this book, but she reluctantly finds herself attached to this new guy. By the end of the book, I was too (I loooooove Julian). AND THEN. BAM. CUE BOOK HURLING. Another cliffie. Another heart breaking cliffie. DAMMIT.

Sidenote: I *hate* this cover. Everything I hate about YA covers right there. Also, it didn’t match my cover to Delirium at all, and I hate when my bookshelf aesthetic is thwarted by publishers.

Review of Book Three: I closed it calmly and walked away.

Like any good dystopian YA novel, Requiem culminates in the conflict between Lena and the good guys, and the bad guys who’ve made their lives so wonky. The cool thing about Requiem (for me) was the point of view shift. The novel goes back and forth between Lena fighting out in The Wilds, and Hana, her best friend from book 1, who has received the cure in the time she and Lena have been separated. We get a glimpse into what Lena’s life would have been like if she’d never met Alex, if they’d never escaped. Also, Oliver really delivers on the secondary characters. She introduced some awesome characters in book 2, and they get even more awesome in this book.

She also pits Alex against Julian, and I’m gonna be honest: I was not satisfied with the lack of male posturing over Lena. In a lot of ways, this book just didn’t go where I wanted it to. Oliver is great at the cliffhangers, but maybe not so awesome at the satisfying endings? I don’t know. All I know is that there was zero book hurling, just confusion.

Predictions for Delirium the TV show: I will watch it. I will watch the heck out of it.

Delirium has been picked up for pilot on FOX, and HOT DAMN but it has some potential.

Emma Roberts is Lena, and I’ve seen mostly positive thoughts on this (although I’m sure there are girls out there who hate this casting news). I’m one big ball of ambivalence. I think she’ll bring a decent amount of star power to a teen TV show, so it’s a good fit.

Gregg Sulkin (Mr. Wesley Fitzgerald from Pretty Little Liars) is Julian, and as Team Julian myself I say HECK YES.

Daren Kagasoff is Alex, and doesn’t he seem a little old? I don’t know. I suffered through a whole episode of Secret Life for research for this post on Shailene Woodley, and I just remember him being painfully smarmy. But he can be whatever because I am Team Julian Forever.

TEAM JULIAN, yes? YES.

THE ROCKETEER (Billy Campbell) is the bad guy, Thomas Fineman. THE ROCKETEER, you guys. Yes. I might be showing my 90s kid colors with that reference, but I LOVED THE ROCKETEER.

Apparently the pilot makes huge changes from the book series, introducing Julian from the get-go instead of much later (like Book 2). So YAY love triangle from the beginning.

BUT the pilot also covers the ENTIRE plot of the first book, so it leaves me wondering: where will they go from there? I mean, sure there’s plenty of potential story lines in the premise, but they aren’t even going to take a full season to explore the first book?

Because FOX has only ordered the pilot, and not a full series, fans of the book are trying to make sure it gets picked up. And apparently having a tumblr is better than having a Neilsen box these days.

I think a TV show will do much better than a movie for this series. It’s too like so many other YA novels-turned-films to be unique, but it has a lot of possibilities for meandering story arcs that are great for TV (Vampire Diaries, anyone)?

Don’t we all let so much slide when teen reads are on TV rather than the big screen? We expect it to be a little cheesier, and we enjoy it a lot more because we aren’t being pretentious about it. So I’m excited.