Words I Write Crazy: Week 12 Reviews: Annabel, Hana, Raven, Requiem

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Week 12 Reviews: Annabel, Hana, Raven, Requiem

From Goodreads:
Lena's mother, Annabel, has always been a mystery—a ghost in Lena's past. Until now.

Discover her secrets in Lauren Oliver's brilliant original digital story set in the world of New York Times bestsellers Delirium and Pandemonium.

Lena Halloway's mother, Annabel, supposedly committed suicide when Lena was only six years old. That's the lie that Lena grew up believing, but the truth is very different. As a rebellious teenager, Annabel ran away from home and straight into the man she knew she was destined to marry. The world was different then—the regulations not as stringent, the cure only a decade old. Fast forward to the present, and Annabel is consigned to a dirty prison cell, where she nurtures her hope of escape and scratches one word over and over into the walls: Love.

But Annabel, like Lena, is a fighter. Through chapters that alternate between her past and present, Annabel reveals the story behind her failed cures, her marriage, the births of her children, her imprisonment, and, ultimately, her daring escape.

From Goodreads:
The summer before they're supposed to be cured of the ability to love, best friends Lena and Hana begin to drift apart. While Lena shies away from underground music and parties with boys, Hana jumps at her last chance to experience the forbidden. For her, the summer is full of wild music, dancing—and even her first kiss.

But on the surface, Hana must be a model of perfect behavior. She meets her approved match, Fred Hargrove, and glimpses the safe, comfortable life she’ll have with him once they marry. As the date for her cure draws ever closer, Hana desperately misses Lena, wonders how it feels to truly be in love, and is simultaneously terrified of rebelling and of falling into line.

From Goodreads:
As a teenager, Raven made the split-second decision to flee across the border to the Wilds, compelled to save an abandoned newborn—a baby girl left for dead and already blue from the cold. When she and the baby are taken in by a band of rebels, Raven finds herself an outsider within a tight-knit group. The only other newcomer is an untrustworthy boy known as the Thief until he finally earns himself a new name: Tack.

Now she and Tack are inseparable, committed to each other, the fledgling rebellion, and a future together. But as they both take center stage in the fight, Raven must decide whether the dangers of the revolution are worth risking her dreams of a peaceful life with Tack.

As her story hurtles back and forth between past and present, Raven transforms from a scared girl newly arrived in the Wilds to the tough leader who helps Lena save former Deliria-Free poster boy Julian Fineman from a death sentence. Whatever the original mission may have been, Raven abides by a conviction that she believes to her core: You always return for the people you love.

By turns surprising, revelatory, and poignant, Raven’s story enriches the Delirium world and resonates with a voice that is as vulnerable as it is strong.

From Goodreads:
They have tried to squeeze us out, to stamp us into the past.

But we are still here.

And there are more of us every day.

Now an active member of the resistance, Lena has been transformed. The nascent rebellion that was under way in Pandemonium has ignited into an all-out revolution in Requiem, and Lena is at the center of the fight.

After rescuing Julian from a death sentence, Lena and her friends fled to the Wilds. But the Wilds are no longer a safe haven—pockets of rebellion have opened throughout the country, and the government cannot deny the existence of Invalids. Regulators now infiltrate the borderlands to stamp out the rebels, and as Lena navigates the increasingly dangerous terrain, her best friend, Hana, lives a safe, loveless life in Portland as the fiancée of the young mayor.

Maybe we are driven crazy by our feelings.

Maybe love is a disease, and we would be better off without it.

But we have chosen a different road.

And in the end, that is the point of escaping the cure: We are free to choose.

We are even free to choose the wrong thing.

My Review:
I just loved reading these! The 3 short stories, just getting to see these side characters who we either knew fairly well, or not at all. I mean, we didn't really meet Lena's mom, Raven was a new character in the last book, and Hana was Lena's best friend. And then Requiem ended the series, though I've seen Alex, I'm unlikely to get a copy to read it, so this is the end for me!

I really enjoyed these short stories, and really getting a lot at other lives in this universe beside's Lena's, because while she is important, and getting these 3 books, there are other people, and we got to know them, and learn some things about this world, that we didn't before!

So Requiem was a perfect ending to the series. Well, nearly! I could pretty much how it was going to end, that they were going to win, that there were going to be a few losses, but why did those 2 characters, well, I'm pretty sure 2, have to die? And then, that Lena, in the end, would pick Alex? Yeah.

Requiem, for me, was a mix of Delirum, and Pandemonium, because they're in Lena's home town for part of it, and then for another part of it, they're in the woods that she was in, in Pandemonium. And that mix of locations, and varying feelings, that just make this the ending of the series!

I've enjoyed this series so much, and these were great editions, and I can't wait to read more Lauren Oliver books!

Author: Lauren Oliver
Series: Delirium #0.5, 1.5, 2.5. 3
Read: March 21st, 21st, 21st, 21st, 2013
Source: Tuebl
Reason Why: Loved the first few books, and they're 2013 Dystopia Books, Sequel Challenge 2013 books, and Requiem is a WoW Book and a End of Series 2013 Book!
Publisher: HarperCollins Children's Books
Published: December 26th 2012, December 19th 2011, March 5th 2013, March 5th 2013

Annabel: