{Review} Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

Title: Pandemonium

Author: Lauren Oliver

Publisher: Harper Teen
Series: Delirium, #2

Release Date: February 28th, 2012

Pages: 375 (Hardcover)

Source: Bought

Rating: ★★★★☆

I'm pushing aside the memory of my nightmare,

pushing aside thoughts of Alex,

pushing aside thoughts of Hana and my old school,

push,

push,

push,

like Raven taught me to do.

The old life is dead.

But the old Lena is dead too.

I buried her.

I left her beyond a fence,

behind a wall of smoke and flame.

Lauren Oliver delivers an electrifying follow-up to her acclaimed New York Times bestseller, Delirium. This riveting, brilliant novel crackles with the fire of fierce defiance, forbidden romance, and the sparks of a revolution about to ignite.

Cover Impressions: I'm actually glad they changed the covers for this series. I love the new covers, I think they're gorgeous. Although this one looks kind of weird to me, because I can't really make out where her body is. o_o Is it hidden behind all those flowers? Nonetheless, I think this cover is very pretty and goes perfectly with the new cover of the first book.

Thoughts: The actual rating I gave is 4.5 stars.

I loved Delirium. It took a while for that book to actually pull me, but once it did, I wanted to drown in the story and Lauren Oliver's beautiful writing. The ending even made me all choked up.

I had high expectations for this book, and I'm happy to say it didn't let me down. I couldn't give it five stars because of the issues I had with how the chapters are laid out. It constantly goes between then and now on each chapter. It would've helped a little if the then chapters used past tense, I think. But yeah, how the chapters were laid out did make me a bit dizzy.

Lena improved so much in this book. At one point I even thought that she became a badass heroine. I admired her in this book and thought Oliver did a very good job in improving her.

As for the romance, I've gotten love triangle warnings and I was prepared for it. There were two guys in particular that I thought were going to be the possible love interests, Hunter and Tack. And at one point I was fully convinced so. But I was wrong because it never happened. I didn't expect a romance between Lena and Julian, but I actually quite enjoyed it. At first, I was like "No way, there will NEVER be a replacement for Alex." But Julian isn't bad at all. He was very sweet.

And then the ending came.

Oh, the ending. The ending that made me shout at the book so hard that my mother knocked on my door to make sure I was okay. It took me by surprise so much because it was the LAST thing I expected to happen. ._. Like, I know that some people actually did expect it, but I was at the point where I thought it was impossible.

But to be honest─and this might be a spoiler, so be careful─I'm not sure if I should feel relieved or terrified because of that ending. I guess I'm a little bit of both, but judging from how everything was, I think I'm leaning more towards terrified.

Overall, though, Pandemonium was a very action-packed, awesome sequel with the biggest, most jaw-dropping cliffhanger of the century. I would've given it five stars, if not for my problems with the "then and now" chapter system. I'm excited but also terrified to see where this series will go.