Panic

Judul : Panic

Penulis : Lauren Oliver

Tebal : 343 halaman

Penerbit : Hodder& Stoughton Ltd

Panic began as so many things do in Carp, a poor town of twelve thousand people in the middle of nowhere: because it was summer, and there was nothing else to do.

Heather never thought she would compete in panic, a legendary game played by graduating seniors, where the stakes are high and the payoff is even higher. She'd never thought of herself as fearless, the kind of person who would fight to stand out. But when she finds something, and someone, to fight for, she will discover that she is braver than she ever thought.

Dodge has never been afraid of panic. His secret will fuel him, and get him all the way through the game; he's sure of it. But what he doesn't know is that he's not the only one with a secret. Everyone has something to play for.

For Heather and Dodge, the game will bring new alliances, unexpected revelations, and the possibility of first love for each of them-and the knowledge that sometimes the very things we fear are those we need the most.

Liesl & Po

Judul : Liesl & Po

Penulis : Lauren Oliver

Tebal : 310 halaman

Penerbit : Harper Collins

Liesl lives in a tiny attic bedroom, locked away by her cruel stepmother. Her only friends are the shadows and the mice,until one night a ghost appears from the darkness. It is Po, who comes from the Other Side. Both Liesl and Po are lonely, but together they are less alone.

That same night, an alchemist's apprentice, Will, bungles an important delivery. He accidentally switches a box containing the most powerful magic in the world with one containing something decidedly less remarkable.

Will's mistake has tremendous consequences for Liesl and Po, and it draws the three of them together on an extraordinary journey.

Delirium Stories: Hana, Annabel, and Raven

Judul : Delirium Stories: Hana, Annabel, and Raven (Delirium #1.5, #0.5, #2.5)

Penulis: Lauren Oliver

Tebal : 208 halaman

Penerbit : Harper Collins

Karena buku ini terdiri dari tiga novela, saya bahas satu-satu saja.

1. Hana

Saya suka novela yang ini karena saya paling bisa mengerti karakter Hana. Dia suka memberontak dan dia selalu bicara sesuka hati di depan Lena. Di sini diceritakan kalau dia suka menyelinap malam-malam untuk berpesta ria secara tersembunyi. Ia menyukai salah satu cowok di situ dan ia pun mulai cemas karena dalam beberapa bulan ia akan disembuhkan dari delirium. Beberapa kali hampir ketahuan oleh tim pemberantas delirium. Terakhir, ia juga sadar kalau cowok yang disukainya hanya menginginkannya untuk seks saja dan bukan benar-benar menyukainya. Sejak itulah ia mulai berpikir kalau disembuhkan dari delirium jauh lebih baik. Apalagi dia mendapat jodoh anak walikota nantinya. Saat ia ingin memberitahukan pengalamannya pada Lena dan mengakui kalau selama ini Lena benar, ia menemukan kalau sahabatnya itu jatuh cinta pada Alex. Ia merasa kehilangan Lena sehingga ia pun mengkhianati sahabatnya itu dengan melaporkan hubungan mereka pada pemerintah. 

Nuansa kesepian dan sedih di novela cukup terasa. Saya bisa merasakan rasa frustrasi Hana atas hidupnya yang membentang di hadapannya. Saya juga mengerti perasaannya saat perlahan tapi pasti Lena menjauh darinya untuk bersama Alex. Saya tidak menyalahkannya karena berkhianat di akhir. Sangat wajar dan manusiawi kalau dia merasa iri pada Lena. Menurut saya, novela ini membuat saya jadi benar-benar mengenal Hana.

2. Annabel

Sebenarnya sih saya tidak mengerti kenapa penulis ingin menceritakan kisah ibunya Lena ini. Bahkan di ketiga buku utamanya saya tidak tidak merasa karakternya itu penting. 

Novela ini menceritakan kisah Annabel saat masih muda dan bagaimana ia bertemu dengan ayah Lena. Dulu ia hidup miskin dan suka mencuri dari orang lain. Kebetulan ayah Lena adalah orang yang dompetnya ia curi. Ia langsung jatuh cinta pada cowok itu. Hebatnya, saat ia diberikan daftar pasangan yang paling cocok untuknya, ia melihat ayah Lena di daftar itu. Tapi ia merasa keberatan dengan prosedur penyembuhan, ia tidak mau kehilangan perasaannya pada ayah Lena. Namun untung baginya, obat delirium tidak bekerja untuknya. Sayangnya, walaupun dia bahagia, ayah Lena tidak pernah benar-benar menyadari keberadaannya sebagai seorang individu. How sad... Seperti sosok yang dekat namun juga tak tergapai. 

Di samping menceritakan masa lalunya, ada juga cerita tentang kehidupannya di penjara Crypt. Selama bertahun-tahun ia berakting bagai orang bodoh dan gila sambil menunggu seseorang berbaik hati untuk membebaskannya. Dan kesabarannya pun berbuah hasil.

Menurut saya, novela ini sangat sedih karena menceritakan ingatan masa lalu akan orang yang sudah meninggal dan hilang. Saya paling suka novela yang ini dibanding kisah Hana dan Raven.

3. Raven

Saya paling tidak bisa relate dengan karakter ini. Dia kuat, hebat, namun kosong. Saya tidak menemukan sesuatu dalam diri Raven yang bisa bikin saya peduli. Saya juga tidak terlalu suka novelanya yang membahas bagaimana awalnya ia bertemu Blue, bayi yang diselamatkan dan dibesarkannya. Yang saya ingat dari Blue cuma kalau dia mati di buku Pandemonium. Itu doang. Cuma di sini saya jadi tahu kalau dia dan Tack adalah pasangan. Ternyata ada sisi romantis dari seorang Raven. 

Yah, intinya sih saya agak lupa cerita novela Raven ini. Nggak berkesan soalnya.

Jadi, saya paling suka Annabel, Hana, dan terakhir Raven. :)

Seri Delirium:
1. Delirium
2. Pandemonium
3. Requiem

3/5

Requiem

Judul : Requiem (Delirium #3)

Penulis : Lauren Oliver

Tebal : 391 halaman

Penerbit : Harper Collins

They have tried to squeeze us out, to stamp us into the past. 

But we are still here.

And there are more of us everyday.

As her country erupts in open rebellion, Lena fights for the resistance and must make a heartbreaking choice between two loves.

After saving Julian from a death sentence, Lena escapes with him and other members of the resistance. But as she embraces her love for Julian, a boy from her past returns and causes her to question everything. 

In the meantime, Lena's best friend, Hana, is engaged to Portland's young mayor and is living a safe, proscribed, loveless life. The story is told from both Lena and Hana's points of view.

As Lena struggles to save the people she loves, everything comes to a head in this exciting finale to Lauren Oliver's epic trilogy. REQUIEM is a sophisticated, wide-ranging novel that explores the large issues of society, government, and resistance, and of course, there is romance.

Review:

Warning: spoiler!!

Begitu saya menyelesaikan buku ini, saya hanya bisa mendesah kecewa. Cerita sekeren Delirium hanya berakhir seperti itu. Atau lebih tepatnya, tidak punya ending. Banyak hal tidak terselesaikan di buku ini. Saya mengerti kalau saya tidak bisa selalu mengharapkan ending yang memuaskan. Tapi menggantung bukanlah ending. Bahkan kalimat terakhir bukunya lebih cocok untuk buku yang masih memiliki sequelnya.

“Take down the walls. 
That is, after all, the whole point. 
You do not know what will happen if you take down the walls; you cannot see through to the other side, don't know whether it will bring freedom or ruin, resolution or chaos. It might be paradise or destruction. 
Take down the walls.
Otherwise you must live closely, in fear, building barricades against the unknown, saying prayers against the darkness, speaking verse of terror and tightness.
Otherwise you may never know hell; but you will not find heaven, either. You will not know fresh air and flying.
All of you, wherever you are: in your spiny cities, or your one bump towns. Find it, the hard stuff, the links of metal and chink, the fragments of stone filling you stomach. 
And pull, and pull, and pull.
I will make a pact with you: I will do it if you will do it, always and forever.
Take down the walls.” 

Itulah paragraf terakhir di buku ini. Kebetulan perang sedang berlangsung dan pihak Lena baru saja meruntuhkan dinding kota. Tapi di situlah cerita berakhir. -.- Saya masih ingin tahu soal nasib Hana dan apa yang terjadi saat pihak musuh kalah. Memang penulis sudah membereskan masalah cowok yang dipilih Lena. Tapi buku ini kan bukan hanya tentang cinta segitiga. Bahkan penyelesaian masalah itu juga cuma terjadi dalam beberapa paragraf. Sepanjang buku, Lena selalu bersama Julian sementara di latar belakang Alex mendiamkan Lena. Lalu karena Julian memisahkan diri dalam perang, Lena pun bertemu dengan Alex dalam kekacauan itu. Mereka berbicara soal perasaan dan selesai. Julian bahkan belum tahu kalau Lena sudah memilih Alex. Ugh...

Buku ini diceritakan dalam dua sudut pandang secara bergantian: Hana dan Lena. Entah kenapa saya suka sekali bagian Hana yang sudah mendapatkan obat delirium. Hidupnya monoton, namun ternyata dia tidak benar-benar disembuhkan. Ia masih merasa seperti ada sesuatu yang hilang di masa lalunya. Ia juga masih bisa merasa bersalah terhadap Lena karena hal buruk yang pernah dilakukannya (saya cukup terkejut kalau ternyata dialah penyebab Alex ditangkap). Belum lagi calon suaminya yang psikopat. Saya agak merinding gitu bacanya. Sementara itu, bagian Lena tidak memiliki kemajuan plot yang berarti selain membahas soal strategi perang. Tapi itu juga singkat saja karena Lena bukan pejuang utama. Oh, ada tokoh penting yang mati pula. Tapi nggak ada penjelasan lebih lanjut soal itu karena cerita sudah berakhir. Kesallllllll!!!!!

Intinya mah saya kesal sama endingnya yang nggak selesai. Saya mau ada lanjutannya. Grrr...

Di bagian belakang buku ada bonus novela mengenai Alex. Novela ini setidaknya membuat saya cukup memahami karakter Alex walaupun tidak banyak. 

“How did I love her?
Let me count the ways.
The freckles on her nose like the shadow of a shadow; the way she chewed on her lower lip when she walked and how when she ran she looked like she was born going fast and how she fit perfectly against my chest; her smell and the touch of her lips and her skin, which was always warm, and how she smiled.
Like she had a secret.
How she always made up words during Scrabble. Hyddym (secret music). Grofp (cafeteria food). Quaw (the sound a baby duck makes). How she burped her way through the alphabet once, and I laughed so hard I spat out soda through my nose.
And how she looked at me like I could save her from everything bad in the world.

This was my secret: she was the one who saved me.”  (gila kalimatnya, sangat jelas betapa sayangnya Alex sama Lena...)

Saya menuntut penulis bikin buku lanjutannya! Kenapa kau begitu tega mengakhiri cerita keren seperti ini? T.T

3/5

Pandemonium

Judul : Pandemonium (Delirium #2)

Penulis : Lauren Oliver

Tebal : 400 halaman

Penerbit : HarperCollins

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.

In this electrifying follow-up to her acclaimed New York Times bestseller Delirium, Lauren Oliver sets Lena on a dangerous course that hurtles through the unregulated Wilds and into the heart of a growing resistance movement. This riveting, brilliant novel crackles with the fire of fierce defiance, forbidden romance, and the sparks of a revolution about to ignite.

Delirium

Judul : Delirium (Delirium #1)

Penulis : Lauren Oliver

Tebal : 393 halaman

Penerbit : Hodder

Lena Haloway is content in her safe, government-managed society. She feels (mostly) relaxed about the future in which her husband and career will be decided, and looks forward to turning 18, when she’ll be cured of deliria, a.k.a. love. She tries not to think about her mother’s suicide (her last words to Lena were a forbidden “I love you”) or the supposed “Invalid” community made up of the uncured just beyond her Portland, Maine, border. There’s no real point—she believes her government knows how to best protect its people, and should do so at any cost. But 95 days before her cure, Lena meets Alex, a confident and mysterious young man who makes her heart flutter and her skin turn red-hot. As their romance blossoms, Lena begins to doubt the intentions of those in power, and fears that her world will turn gray should she submit to the procedure.

Before I Fall

Title : Before I Fall

Writer : Lauren Oliver

Number of Page : 470

 Publisher : HarperCollins

What if you only had one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?

Samantha Kingston has it all: looks, popularity, the perfect boyfriend. Friday, February 12, should be just another day in her charmed life. Instead, it turns out to be her last.

The catch: Samantha still wakes up the next morning. Living the last day of her life seven times during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death--and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.

In my opinion: 

“Maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there's a tomorrow. Maybe for you there's one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around it, let it slide like coins through you fingers. So much time you can waste it. 

But for some of us there's only today. And the truth is, you never really know.”  

Those words were printed at the first page of this book. Even before I read the whole story, I'd already felt sad. 

Samantha Kingston was once an ugly duck. She was part of unpopular students and she had always hoped to be popular. Yeah, most teenage girls did. And for Sam, she was so lucky when Lindsay became her friend. Suddenly, she became the object of jealousy from other girls. Her crush who didn't care about her before was her boyfriend now. People admired her and wanted to be her friend. To maintain that status, she learned how to dress and followed all "popular" rules. She even left her nerdy best friend, Kent Mcfuller.

I think it was a gift that Samantha could at least live awhile and realize her mistakes before she died. How many people out there who could fix their mistakes before they die? If you died in a sudden accident like Sam, you couldn't even have a chance tell your loved ones how much you cared about them and how much they meant for you. 

When Sam was introduced for the first time, I didn't like her at all. She could die or whatever for all I care. She was mean, proud, and bitchy. She even seduced her teacher, how disgusting was that? But, the sentences at the end of the first chapter stopped me. 

"I know some of you are thinking maybe I deserved it. Maybe I shouldn't have sent that rose to Juliet or dumped my drink on her at the party. Maybe I shouldn't have copied off Lauren Lornet's quiz. Maybe I shouldn't have said those things to Kent. There are probably some of you who think I deserved it because I was going to let Rob go all the way-- because I wasn't going to save myself.

But before you start pointing fingers, let me ask you: is that what I did really so bad? So bad I deserved to die? So bad I deserved to die like that?

Is what I did really so much worse than what anybody else does?

Is it really so much worse than what you do?

Think about it."

Right. What Sam did was not the worst, but still very bad. I hated her but when I finished this book, I liked Sam very much and I was so sorry she had to end her life like that. She was very nice. The way she took care of her sister, giving special gifts to certain people, accepting all her friends even if they were annoying... She changed a lot. Repeating her last days made her realize that her life was useless and shallow. If only young people knew about it and made amends of their lives. Drugs, popularity, partying are worthless. Money is the best. Don't read what this workaholic, money lover, and crazy reader writes.  Even I know many people who cry a lot because their lives in high school are suck. It is a pity that most people know the truth after they grow up and had gone through many experiences. Too late =.=

What I like from this book was how Lauren Oliver could make me care about all characters despite of their flaws. I realized that even the mean, self-centered, and dumb Lindsay had something good within her. It didn't mean that I could forgive Lindsay for what she did to Juliet but at least I could understand. Some people were not sensible sometimes, especially unstable teenagers. 

However, I think it was not fair for Sam that she was the one who paid for Lindsay's mistakes. Really, what happened to Juliet was so horrible. Why weren't there anyone wanted to become her friends? Prejudice happened all the times, but why did all believe what the rumors said? Didn't want to be marked "psycho" as Juliet? Bunch of fools *rolling eyes

Oh, there was romance in this book. The sweet childhood best friend, Kent Mcfuller. This boy was so cute. He had always loved Sam since they were kids. 

“I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took.” Awwwww...

If only he knew how much Sam regretted for abandoning him, how much she loved him. She should tell him that she repeated her life on and on. But, maybe she was given that miracle only to fix Juliet and learn how to love. The end was still the same.

4/5