Title: Requiem Author: Lauren Oliver # of Pages: 391 (paperback) Genre: YA, Science Fiction, Romance Rating: ★★☆☆☆ Synopsis: As her country erupts in open rebellion, Lena fights for the resistance and must make a heartbreaking choice between two loves.
After saving Julian from a death sentence, Lena escapes with him and other members of the resistance. But as she embraces her love for Julian, a boy from her past returns and causes her to question everything.
In the meantime, Lena's best friend, Hana, is engaged to Portland's young mayor and is living a safe, proscribed, loveless life. The story is told from both Lena and Hana's points of view.
Review: After seeing the title of the first chapter: Oh no.
It's always bad news when the chapter title is a character's name. More than likely, the next chapter will have someone else's name as it's title AND will be from his or her point of view.
I wish my hypothesis of POV switching would be wrong. But I wasn't. After reading the second chapter from the other character's POV, I have already knocked the book down to four stars.
I didn't buy Requiem to hear a different character's story! I wanted to hear Lena's! After the cliff-hanger in Pandemonium, I needed to know what happened next in Lena's romantic life. I didn't care too much about anything else. '
The POV switching also sets alarm bells ringing in my head. Why is Oliver doing this for THIS book? This wasn't how she wrote the previous books, so why the change? I know why Roth did it for Allegiant, and I was afraid that something similar is the reason for the change in Requiem.
Of course, now I know that is not the case. I'm not exactly sure why Oliver felt the need to change to point-of-view. The Hana chapters were considerably shorter than the Lena chapters, and all we learn from it is that Fred is bad, proving that Lena's side is the good side after all! But we didn't need to know that Fred was bad to realize Lena and the others are good. That has already been established. As far as I'm considered, most of the beginning Hana chapters are pointless. We've already seen the world inside of society through Lena in Delirium!
I can't believe Lena would accept Alex's "I never loved you" excuse. I would have thought that she would have known better than that. But then I thought that maybe she was just in shock because he had said such a mean thing to her. However, near the end of the book, she still is refusing to believe that Alex loves her, even when Coral tells her so! It's all very frustrating.
Some of the descriptions are...un-appealing, such as "I wonder whether Celia knows what happened last summer: how Steven and I breathed into each other's mouths, and let feelings pass between each other's tongues" (312). It almost sounds as if they're performing some sort of ritual together. This is one of many examples of awkward descriptions.
Oliver also tends to repeat herself. For example, on page 302, the reader is told that Coral "has barely spoken since Alex left." BUT this same point is made AGAIN on page 318 in which it is stated that "since Alex left, [Coral] has gone almost completely mute." A bit unnecessary, yes?
It's as if Oliver just wanted to finish the series. It felt as if there was only half of the book! Then ending was not the final kind of end that I like. And the romance at the end wasn't very good.
If you liked the other two books, go ahead and read this one just to finish the series. But if you haven't, it's not worth your time.
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