Crazy

In Lena's world, love is a disease.  Love is THE disease actually.  It is so feared that at age 18 men and women are "cured" through a surgical procedure which renders them unable to feel love, or much of anything else.  Cured citizens lead safe, healthy lives, without worry about the Delirium of the disease of love.  Romeo and Juliet is required reading for high school students because it is a cautionary tale.  Love = Death.  Lena lives in Portland, Maine, a city safe from the disease of love.  When the story opens, she is roughly 90 days away from being "cured" and will be matched with a young man who has been cured as well.
When I first started reading Delirium, I made the connection that everyone else has made.  This book is similar to Matched.  It is, there's nothing new under the sun, right?  But it is very different and I don't see one as being better than the other, they are both really thought-provoking and enjoyable to read in their own.
I like Lena a lot.  I think she is different from a lot of strong, female, YA characters that we've seen lately because she grows in to the roll of being strong.  She isn't strong at first at all.  She's pretty broken, actually.  But then, as her "cured" date comes closer and as she starts to see that the "safe" world around her isn't what the authorities claim it is, she becomes stronger and stronger.  I really liked seeing her character develop that way and it sets her apart from Katniss, Katsa, Gaia, and Rachel (however, Rachel's Away is kinda similar to Lena's Wilds).
The book is more than 400 pages and you know how I am about long books...but I did rip through this baby pretty quickly and am really looking forward to the sequel.  The ending is pretty darn cool.