Book Review: Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver

 

 

Title: Vanishing Girls

Author: Lauren Oliver

Genre: Mystery, Suspense

Series: This book a stand alone

Source: Digital ARC courtesy of Edelweiss

Book Summary: (Via Goodreads) New York Times bestselling author Lauren Oliver delivers a gripping story about two sisters inexorably altered by a terrible accident.

Dara and Nick used to be inseparable, but that was before the accident that left Dara's beautiful face scarred and the two sisters totally estranged. When Dara vanishes on her birthday, Nick thinks Dara is just playing around. But another girl, nine-year-old Madeline Snow, has vanished, too, and Nick becomes increasingly convinced that the two disappearances are linked. Now Nick has to find her sister, before it's too late.

In this edgy and compelling novel, Lauren Oliver creates a world of intrigue, loss, and suspicion as two sisters search to find themselves, and each other.

Characters: Nick, Dara, and Parker

Plot: Nick and Dara are sisters with a close bond.  Nick is the responsible older sister and Dara is the younger sister who is always getting into trouble, trying risky and dangerous things.  One night after a party the sisters are in a horrific car crash and after, nothing is the same.

What I Loved: There is so much to love about this book!!!  I would like to begin with a disclaimer that this book is awesome BUT it has some major twists.  However, I will not give any spoilers so if the review seems to be missing something, it is!!!!! This book is told in alternating points of view and at different time periods to you are getting the story of the sisters and what led up to the crash and the aftermath in bits and pieces.  As Nick tries to regain her life back by working and interacting with people again and at the same time trying to come to grips with the aftermath of the crash on her and her sister and her family you can see just how far she has slipped into despair and guilt over what has happened.  She begins working at the local amusement park at the insistence of her mother and even though she is hesitant she begins to come out of the shell that she has built up around her. She also at the same time is trying to find out what what caused her sister to go down the path that she did and what she could have done to help her.  This is part of the guilt that is very much destroying her.  This book is truly a psychological thriller so not only is it a little difficult to discuss without giving away a major plot point but it also makes you rethink (and in my case reread) everything in this novel.  I found myself going back to different points in the book and seeing things much differently!!!! Since I am a librarian in a school this book will not only be LOVED by my students but will make for a great discussion! I can’t wait for my students to read it.

What I could have done without: It is not that I could have done without it but at the beginning it was a little confusing.  The chapters alternate between different points of view (although each chapter is labeled with the person’s name) but what really got me was the different time periods for example some of them are labeled before and after and some have exact times.  Once you get into the story it is less of an issue but at the beginning I had a difficult time with keeping things straight.

Final Grade: A

Book Review by Janine

Book Review: Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver
REVIEW BY NICKY

If you read my review of Delirium, you know that as soon as I finished it, I ran out that night to buy Pandemonium.  I could not wait to read the continuation of Lena's story.  I stayed up late last night to finish Pandemonium, and now I have to wait a possible 10 FULL MONTHS to read the conclusion in Requiem!  Oh, Lauren Oliver, how you torture me so!!

Pandemonium picks up right where Delirium left us.  Lena has made it across the border fence into "The Wilds."  She has escaped the love-less world of Portland and her "procedure" to remove the part of her brain that allows her to feel emotion.  With the help of Alex, who makes the ultimate sacrifice to save Lena, she now is free for the first time.  Lena, however, is barely alive when found by Raven and the group of "Invalids" who have made a life together in the Wilds.  They take her in, bring her back to health, and Lena slowly becomes a part of this nomadic family.
Life in the Wilds, Lena quickly learns, is not easy.  It is harsh, dangerous, even life-threatening.  The group travels south for the winter, and then Lena becomes part of the resistance.  She takes on a new identity in New York city, blends in with the "cureds," and then works to infiltrate one of their extreme activist group, the DFA.  When Lena is kidnapped with Julian, the son of the DFA's leader, she must rely on her new survival skills and perhaps a partnership with Julian, if they are going to make it out alive.

I think there are several things that really sets this series apart from other dystopian stories.  Of course, there is the premise... the idea that society, in an effort to keep from falling apart, has created a world without love or freedom.  As Raven says--a world of zombies.
There is also Lena.  Lena, who is strong and complex; who changes as the story and her world change.   The world Lauren Oliver created in Delirium is very different from the Wilds in Pandemonium.  A testament to Ms. Oliver's writing skill, Lena changes and develops right along with the story.  She is hardened, and stronger, and therefore I like her even more in this second novel.
And finally, there is Lauren Oliver's writing.  The beauty with which she puts words together continues to impress me in this book.  From Pandemonium:

“I read once about a kind of fungus that grows in trees. The fungus begins to encroach on the systems that carry water and nutrients up from the roots to the branches. It disables them one by one – it crowds them out. Soon, the fungus – and only the fungus – is carrying the water, and the chemicals, and everything else the tree needs to survive. At the same time it is decaying the tree slowly from within, turning it minute by minute to rot.

That is what hatred is. It will feed you and at the same time turn you to rot.

It is hard and deep and angular, a system of blockades. It is everything and total.

Hatred is a high tower. In the Wilds, I start to build, and to climb.” 

Beautiful.  Simply beautiful.  

The only thing that scares me (spoiler alert!)...

is the love triangle.  I am not a fan.  However, I am comforted by the conviction that Lauren Oliver will not disappoint.  I'm sure she will continue to surprise and impress me.  

I had a copy of Delirium on a staff recommendation display, and one of our high school students came up to me last week to tell me that she had picked it up, was in the middle of reading it and LOVED it.  This morning, I gave her my personal copy of Pandemonium, and we gushed about it and can't wait to discuss it after she finishes the second novel.  Thank you, Lauren Oliver!!!

Book Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Delirium by Lauren Oliver
REVIEW BY NICKY
If you can judge a book by how badly you want to read the sequel, well... I finished Delirium last night, and today I am running out to the book store to grab Pandemonium!


Lena has grown up in Portland, Maine, one of the "approved cities" in the U.S.  In this alternative society, love (or amor deliria nervosa) has been deemed a disease, something of which all young people are cured.  They undergo a procedure which alters the brain to no longer feel love or emotional pain--they essentially become emotionally numb.
(Cue Pink Floyd music, here.)  Lena is actually looking forward to the procedure and the calmness that will come after.  She is afraid that she, like her mother, will contract the disease.  It drove her mother to suicide.  However, a few months before she is scheduled for her procedure, Lena falls in love.
Alex opens Lena's eyes to what it's like to love and feel loved, to experience joy, and he reveals the truth about her mother.  But, can they escape Portland before Lena's procedure?  Will she be doomed to a life without Alex, without joy, without love?

I am on a dystopia kick right now, so I was pretty excited to read Delirium.  I found the premise really interesting... the idea that love can be seen as harmful.  I understand how the idea formed.  Love can make people to do all kinds of things--some of them bad.  Yet, a life without it, is hard to imagine.  As a mother, I think the thing that really got to me was the description of how parents who have been "cured" behave with their children.  There were moments when I felt a little annoyed by Lena's descriptions about how beautiful Alex looks and the flowery language she uses to describe every detail.  However, I had to keep reminding myself that from Lean's point of view (that of a teenage girl), the language we appropriate.  In other words, from a young woman's perspective as narrator, Lauren Oliver nailed it!  I cannot wait to read Pandemonium!