Grab Bags And Other Things Made of Win

Happy Weekend Everyone!

I just wanted to do a quick post to share some fun things with you in case you've yet to hear about them. First, HarperTeen has put together a series of EPIC grab bags they will be giving away throughout the month. Each Friday in March, one winner will receive five crushable tales from the Story Crush library, so go HERE to check out all the awesomeness.

As you will see if you decide to enter, you need to "like" Epic Reads on Facebook in order to do so. I am not on Facebook because I work from home and the blog and Twitter are big enough distractions that I cannot possibly sign up and be tempted by yet another one, but my husband has an account. And I happen to know his password. So I logged in, "liked" Epic Reads, entered to win and considered it a job well done really. Then I get a phone call from my husband. It went a bit like this:

Hubs: Did you happen to use my Facebook account today?

Me: Um. What makes you ask that?

Hubs: I keep getting updates from something called Epic Reads.

Me: Huh. I can neither confirm nor deny responsibility for that.

Hubs: I'll take that as confirmation. Why did you "like" them on my behalf?

Me: Well, I'll tell you. They have a grab bag full of amazing books and I'm going to win it.

Hubs: You're going to win it?

Me: Yes.

Hubs: So you've simply entered to win is what you're saying, "liking" them didn't actually win you anything.

Me: If you care to interpret it as such. I'm more inclined to think positively and predict an outcome more in my favor.

Hubs: How many people have entered?

Me: Several.

.....

Hundred. Maybe thousand.

Hubs: So your chances of actually winning are....

Me: Slim. To possibly none. But that's not really the point is it?

Hubs: I thought it kind of was.

Me: No. The point is I went out there on a limb and took a chance. You should encourage and support me in all my endeavors, however large or small dammit.

Hubs: Uh huh. Please stop "liking" things for me. This is my account.

Me: I make no promises.

It was a good talk I feel. I think we got some things worked out ;-) Anyway, the grab bags have some really fabulous books in them, so don't forget to check out the Epic Reads Facebook page each week to enter. And hopefully win. *crosses fingers*

Additionally, I have some very cool Lauren Oliver related items to share with you. First up is a Liesl & Po Classroom sweepstakes, all of the details of which can be found HERE.

And secondly, the fantastic Dark Days tour is continuing this weekend in Los Angeles with Lauren Oliver, Claudia Gray, and Dan Wells all in attendance. Wish I could be in LA right now. For those of you who are like me and are nowhere near sunny California, you can catch the event as it's livestreamed tomorrow (March 11th) HERE courtesy of Tiffany at About To Read.

If you just can't wait that long to hear Lauren Oliver talk about the unbelievable Delirium trilogy, you can check out her stop in Raleigh, North Carolina in a video HERE.

Phew. That was a lot of links. Enjoy all the Epic Reads fun everyone!

Review: Pandemonium

PANDEMONIUM (Delirium #2)
Lauren Oliver
Young Adult/Dystopian
375 pages
HarperTeen
Available February 28th
Received from publisher for review

Warning: review contains spoilers from Delirium, but no spoilers from Pandemonium.

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
The old Lena is dead. The old Lena remains with Alex in Portland, Maine, behind a wall of smoke and flame, but the new Lena was born in the Wilds, transformed by hardship, deprivation, and loss.

Now an active member of the resistance, Lena fights for a world in which love will no longer be considered a dangerous disease. Her inner life is as turbulent as the world around her. . . . Although consumed with grief for Alex, might she be falling in love with someone else?

MY THOUGHTS
While Delirium introduced us to a world where the pursuit of perfection resulted in the elimination of the very emotions that make life worth living, Pandemonium takes us back to a place where the rawness of pain, love and loss is a tangible thing–the memory of what was within Lena's grasp and then ripped away a companion dogging our every step as we follow her through her life after Alex. Delirium gave us shells of human beings, individuals bottled up tight and sealed with a cure lest a modicum of independent thought or feeling slip through, but with Pandemonium we get a new cast of characters not hindered by the regulations governing those inside the fences. More interestingly however, we get a new Lena. A Lena who used to subscribe to the deceptively appealing poison spouted by proponents of the cure but who now survives with memories of the boy she loved piercing her skin every time her mind drifts back to him, turning her into a sieve through which pour all the tragically beautiful droplets of Alex and his sacrifice.

Ms. Oliver does a stunning job of crafting an Alex-free story, showing us just how strong-willed Lena is without him there to help her navigate a world where touch is encouraged instead of forbidden, and where love leaves scars that are not to be feared but cherished instead. While we may have physically cringed upon reading the synopsis and learning of a possible new love interest for Lena, we quickly realize there is going to be no quick fix for the destruction left in the wake of Alex’s demise, and we take a sort of comfort in her obvious pain knowing she’s clearly no more ready to move on than we are. Chapters split into two time periods in Lena’s life—the time immediately following Lena’s escape over the fence and a few months into the future as she’s on assignment for the resistance—give us action-packed glimpses of a transformed young woman, and it’s easy to find ourselves supporting her in her mourning, her resolve to take advantage of Alex’s gift, and her attempts to build a new life from the literal ashes of her previous one.

New potential love interest Julian is in much the same place Lena was in Delirium, a parrot repeating the ideals and doctrines of a grossly confused society while harboring secret thoughts of what life might be like if things were different. He’s perfectly likeable and his relationship with Lena builds at a slow enough pace to give us time to adjust to him, allowing our damaged and love-shy hearts to warm at an acceptable speed so we don’t feel like our fledgling attraction to Julian is a betrayal of Alex. Though he doesn’t completely win us over in this second installment, he does a multitude of small things that go a long way to helping Lena heal, and for that alone we begin to let him through our Alex-plated defenses.

Though Pandemonium definitely has the feel of a book building us up for what are sure to be epic events in the next installment, Ms. Oliver gives us plenty of new information and creates enough new strong and intriguing relationships to ensure this story isn’t simply filler. We do end with yet another emotional cliffhanger, one we sense coming but one that still hits us like a fist to the gut nonetheless. The final three words spoken are a painful mockery of the words "I love you" that were such a vital part of Delirium, each word tumbling from the speaker’s lips in a way that causes us to erupt in a full body shudder as the venom in them leaves us cold and broken with no other course of action but to wait and see what kind of response they will receive in book three.

Rating: 4.5/5

Group Interview: Lauren Oliver

It's the last day of the Cornucopia of Dystopia Blog Tour! To add a bit of fun to this final day, the participating blogs each submitted a question to Lauren Oliver, author of Delirium, and she was nice enough to take some time to answer all our questions. The full interview is spread across eight blogs, each linking to the next in the chain. To read the interview in its entirety, just follow the link trail starting below my question to Lauren where I've linked to the next blog. Hope you all enjoy!

Delirium is a story that really makes me believe in love, and one I walked away from with the hope that the strength of that emotion will be enough to get Alex and Lena through their trials. Is there one quote/scene from either Delirium or any other novel that made you sit back and say "Now that's love for you"?

Part of what was so fun about writing Delirium was that the whole novel was kind of a meditation on love—in all of its different manifestations. Falling in love is only the most obvious of them. I really loved writing about the love Lena and Hana had for one another, even though they couldn’t name it. Love is complex and strange and needs to be articulated over time, so I’m not sure you can point to a moment and say “that’s love.” Actually, that’s not true—weirdly, I think that when Hana and Lena have their blowout fight, and Lena feels like Hana has reached down into the very pit of her, that’s love. Only someone you love can know you that well—better than you know yourself, even—and consequently be able to hurt you.

Thanks so much for popping in Lauren! To continue the interview, please visit Rummanah at Books in the Spotlight.

For more information on Lauren and her books, you can find her here:
Website
Blog
Twitter

Review: Delirium

DELIRIUM (Delirium #1)
Lauren Oliver
Young Adult
440 pages
Harper Teen
Available February 1st
Received from publisher via NetGalley

THE STORY
I love you. Remember. They cannot take it.

Well, the government is certainly going to try. Love is a disease. Something to be feared for its ability to cause extreme emotional reactions that inhibit a productive and healthy lifestyle. Love needs to be eradicated, and so there is the cure. At eighteen, everyone is evaluated and undergoes a procedure to remove the part of the brain responsible for love, resulting in a more stable individual who will take their place in a strong and flourishing society.

Lena is counting the days until her cure. Counting the days until she'll be free of emotion and can live a normal life with the man to whom she's matched, and will no longer be haunted by memories of a mother who laughed, danced, and defied all of society by loving her husband. Just a couple more months and she'll be safe.

On the day of her evaluation, several weeks prior to her eighteenth birthday, Lena catches a brief glimpse of young boy, laughing as he's watching the chaos resulting from a demonstration by Invalids, a group of people who refuse the cure and live outside city walls in the Wilds. Not long after, Lena runs into this young boy again, Alex he says his name is, and finds herself in the position she fears most: falling in love. How quickly her life changes. Instead of welcoming the cure, it's now the thing she dreads most for it will take from her her feelings for Alex, the boy who has changed everything.

MY THOUGHTS
Delirium is a story that flawlessly elicits from us the very emotions denied its characters, one that forces all our feelings to the surface so our pain and fear for Lena and Alex are etched across our features as we furrow our brows, bite our lips, and fidget uncomfortably in nervous anticipation. We proudly wear these outward markers which so irrefutably illustrate the level of our entanglement in the story, and glory in our emotive displays, thankful we can express our reactions freely while the characters to whom we eventually become so thoroughly connected must suppress them as a survival mechanism. We must breathe through a rapidly escalating anger and resentment at the rules and regulations strangling Lena's world, watching as strong and intelligent characters have the cure forced upon them but go down in a blaze of emotional glory, only to rise from the ashes cold and collected – phoenixes stripped of the colorful feathers and vibrant heart that made them pulse with life.

Lena has an exceptional inner fortitude, and as much as she tries to convince herself the cure is everything she wants out of life, her independent mind refuses to be cajoled by her half-hearted beliefs, and instead thrives with a latent defiance that surfaces at the most dangerous of times. The camaraderie with Lena does not form instantaneously however, as her overwhelming fear of sharing her mother's fate combined with her refusal to acknowledge her sympathies for the resistance keep us at an unfortunate distance. Once Alex manages to shatter the illusions to which she so desperately clings, the floodgates open and we are swept away in a glorious maelstrom of pent-up frustration, anger, and the most potent of all, love. This one little word in the context of this world has more significance and power than volumes of text, and when those eight letters, three words, and one meaning finally break the society-imposed silence and slide their way past Lena's lips, we can't help but mouth them along with her: I love you.

Though the relationship between Alex and Lena is a bit slow in developing, their interactions not truly beginning until almost halfway through the book, it is certainly one worth waiting for. One that represents so much more than an idle attraction or passing fancy, and one that causes our breath hitch as we know their journey will not be one marked by simple laughter, meaningful touches, or carefree smiles; but rather will be plagued by logistical difficulties, tormented by unimaginable repercussions should they be caught, and perhaps even destroyed by the very love which provides them so much happiness. With each whispered sentiment and sidelong glance, we find ourselves hunched closer to the pages in the hope physical proximity will allow us to better catch any subtle nuance in their fragile yet exceedingly resolute connection, fully understanding we have become so desperately attached to them we cannot tear ourselves from their embrace.

The only slight imperfection in an absolutely beautiful story is the presence of several extraneous anecdotes from a past time and place that highlight an emotion similar to the one Lena is experiencing presently, perhaps meant to reinforce the strength of the current feeling, but it takes us away from events in which we very much want to stay immersed. Overall however, Delirium is a story where the encouragement of emotional vacancy has the opposite effect on us as readers, our capacity to feel strengthening with every page until we are full to bursting, and we reach an end where the only outlet for release is to let the tears flow freely down our cheeks as we praise the beauty and pain of being in love.

Rating: 4.5/5