Pandemonium

Pandemonium - Lauren Oliver

❝ We are all identical drips and drops of people hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path.❞

Lauren's writing is still brilliant on this one. I will be reading definitely more books from her.
Now my thoughts on "Pandemonium":

The second book of the series is narrated again by Lena; her past and present self. Our heroine is more brave in this book than in the first one and she believes more in herself. I liked the second installment a bit more than the first one, perhaps because Raven was in it and not annoying Hana =P

 

There were lots of highlighted quotes on this one but this a quote that I really loved: (about banned books)

❝ Some of them -the best ones- are doors.❞

They are indeed, dear Lauren.

 

More on the story --Spoilers ahead--

Lena has managed to cross the fence and end up to the wilds leaving behind Alex. She is of course heartbroken. As she learns to adapt to her new life she meets new people along the way like Raven, a fierce, independent girl only a few years older than Lena. I loved Raven and how tough she was. Lena's present self narration is about her persona as an 'invalid' (like Alex was). In the present storyline, she behaves like a cured and she a part of the resistance.

Now what knocked one star was the new love interest: Julian. Although I didn't hate the introduction of a new romance, I didn't love it either. The story between Lena and Julian is basically the repetition of the story of Alex and Lena but switched: in the first book Alex was first not honest with Lena, he was the one that made her 'sick', he was the strong one. In this book, it's the other way around: now Lena is the one that is being dishonest with Julian (at least at first), she is the one that gives him the deliria and she is the strong one. I get that this parallel was made to see perhaps the growth of our heroine, but still..

That being said, I quite liked Julian. Truth to be told we did get to know more about Julian than we did for Alex. The relationship with Lena had a nice pace too.

Which brings me to my biggest complain with these series: time. What I mean by that is that everything in these books is happening too damn fast: Lena fell for Alex too fast (being in love at eighteen can be instantaneous but still), she adapted to the Wilds way too fast and she got over Alex too fast. 

As a final note the ending wasn't exactly shocking but still I enjoyed that

Alex is alive!

(show spoiler)