Requiem by Lauren Oliver

Title: Requiem (Delirium #3)
Author: Lauren Oliver
Publisher: Harper Teen
Release date: March 5th 2013
Source: Edelweiss
Format: egalley

Rating: 4/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

You can read my review of  Delirium - here and Pandemonium - here

Now an active member of the resistance, Lena has transformed. The nascent rebellion that was underway 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 infiltrate the borderlands to stamp out the rebels.

As Lena navigates the increasingly dangerous terrain of the Wilds, her best friend, Hana, lives a safe, loveless life in Portland as the fiancee of the young mayor. Requiem is told from both Lena and Hana's points of view. They live side by side in a world that divides them until, at last, their stories converge.

With lyrical writing, Lauren Oliver seamlessly interweaves the peril that Lena faces with the inner tumult she experiences after the reappearance of her first love, Alex, the boy she thought was dead. Sophisticated and wide-ranging, Requiem brings the Delirium trilogy to a thrilling conclusion.

I was dying to read Requiem, after the major cliffhanger ending of Pandemonium, I just needed to know what would happen with Lena.

This book is told from two points of view, alternating between Lena and Hana (no! why!), Lena is back in the wilds with resistance, Julian and the rest of the gang. And while much of the plot is Lena torn between her love for two boys, not knowing what to do, how to act and struggling with her feelings for both of them. And  although the tension between the boys and Lena is strong at the beginning of the book, it dissipates later because some circumstances that I will not going to tell because I don´t wait to spoil the book. But another big part of the story is the life in the wilds and Lena being an integral part of the resistance and to some extent showing her strength and leadership.

And the part of Hana, at the beginning I did not like the fact that she was an important part of the book and there were chapters from her point of view, but as the story progressed I understood why the author was doing this, because of what is going on Portland and what we see through the eyes of Hana are an important part of the plot, although it does not seem to at the beginning of the book. And I already assumed that is what he did in Delirium Hana, but here was confirmed and somewhat Lena could redeem himself.

I really liked Requiem, it has a lot of action and there are several times where we see how much Lena has grown, that she´s no longer that insecure and frightened girl that she was at the beginning of the trilogy, now she´s a strong, courageous and a leader. At the end of the book I was biting my nails, because I did not want it to end (this happens to me always with the final book of a series .... I do not want it to end!), many things happen in the final chapters, that as soon as I finish reading the book, I had to stop and re-read some parts of the book and assimilate them. And that ending was not what I wanted to happen, I do not like open endings, I prefer the closed ending...the ending wrapped up in a box with a bow and the happily ever after, but you do not always get what you want, but I do like Requiem, it´s very well written and I love how Lauren Oliver writes. The Delirium trilogy is essential reading for fans of dystopian novels.

I want to thank HarperTeen and Edelweiss for this review copy.