I think this is one of many YA books in which the second half is much more eventful than the first half, probably because the author feels that a trilogy warrants more world-building and has more time to fit the story in and so they can allow for a lot of setting up (and this is so often the case simply because there are so many trilogies in YA). The second half was actually better than I expected, and it earned an extra star in the last quarter.

The setting is well depicted but not entirely plausible. I buy the high-security fenced city, the regulators and guards everywhere, the constant fear of one’s conversations being heard, all of that, this being pretty much a universal element of the dystopian genre. However, this is not the central premise – the central premise is that love is considered a disease. In the case of 1984 or The Hunger Games, it is easy to see how the future society depicted relates to our cultural zeitgeist, and how we could go from one to the other, but in this case it is difficult to see how love, which is such an important aspect of our current society (to the extent that it is glorified in the media), could be outlawed. I think the story and character development made up for this in some ways, and was more rewarding to read overall than some other dystopians I have come across, but this particular issue still bothered me. (I don’t know whether we get more explanation on how it happened in later books – I plan to read them, but not immediately.)

Teen angst is not rife, but comes through in certain scenes. I would expect the currently-dominant dystopian YA books to have less of this than the paranormal romances of a few years ago, especially since the stakes are generally so much higher, but there are almost always tinges of it. While it’s good that authors want to give their books a personal, human level as well as discussing society as a whole, I could feel a bit of the typical eyerolling teenager when Lena refused to help her Aunt in the kitchen

Spoiler

or avoided meeting her match partner

. However, being a 19-year-old I am not really part of the target audience, so perhaps I shouldn't be too judgemental.

Spoiler

I liked seeing music and poetry through the eyes of someone experiencing it for the first time – I thought this was a particularly effective touch. The poetry-reading scene was also very moving, and extremely sweet (probably the best scene in the book). The fact that her mother was in the Crypts was a twist that I didn't see coming (though I suspected she might still be alive): I liked that it added a more macabre tone and made the consequences of societal disobedience seem much more real. Obviously Lauren Oliver is also whetting our appetite for more of this plotline in the sequels, as well. I have heard that the rest of the series was met with mixed response, but I am interested to see where the story goes now that Alex is seemingly out of the picture.