My Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Book Source: e-ARC via NetGalley, by request
The deadliest of all deadly things: It kills you both when you have it, and when you don’t.
Ninety-five days. That’s how long it will be before Lena turns 18 and has “the procedure”, a sort of brain surgery to prevent Amor deliria nervosa, the disease of love. After that, she will complete her education, be married to a suitable young man, and have however many children the evaluators deem appropriate. In the first few chapters, the reader gets acquainted with Lena and learns that she has plenty of reasons to fear ever falling in love. As in any good dystopian scenario, though, all is not well in this new loveless America, and Lena begins to uncover the truth behind the many lies she has been told.
The idea of love as an eradicable disease, and that its elimination would create a perfectly content society, is an interesting one, but it never really becomes clear how the destruction of the “sickness” became the U.S. government’s number-one priority. The book lacks the solid world-building really needed to support the reader’s suspension of disbelief, but sympathetic characters, suspenseful action scenes, the promise of secrets revealed, and the specter of doomed romance all combine to keep the reader turning pages to the end.
There is a little echo of Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in the way the government has taken control of so many facets of people’s lives, especially their relationships, and there is a big echo of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the way a metaphor becomes literal. In Lena’s world, love really does make you crazy. It really might kill you. And it really can save you in the end.
