Originally 4.5 stars. Gave 5. After a week of thinking about it 4. Certain things stayed with me and bothered me more than originally thought.Originally posted at yAdult ReviewThis book starts fairly quickly after the second book in the series, Pandemonium, ends. Waiting that year was so painful I actually re-read Pandemonium, to get myself back to the right frame of mind to read this.Requiem, much like the two previous books sucked me in right away to the point I couldn’t put the book down. Sleep and work became very hard while reading this. This book alternates points of view between Lena, our main heart to the story and Hana, Lena’s once BFF. Lena is back with the resistance and this time with Julian. Lena is having a hard time with finding out that Alex isn’t dead, but very much alive. How Oliver handles the feelings between the three is very interesting to me. Julian is confused because everything he knows isn’t ‘right’ anymore. Alex is confused how Lena could fall in love with someone else and Lena is confused with how Alex is alive and she’s now in love with Julian. I found the situation to be handled quite realistically for what could be considered realistic in a dystopian novel. I have read reviews where the reader was upset because one of the three didn’t do the ‘obvious’ choice. The obvious choices are often the most overlooked choices and while Oliver painted a heartbreaking portrayal of love, she also painted a relate-able one.Lena is also fighting other forces in her life: her mother being alive, there being a traitor in her group and fighting their way back into the city.Hana’s life is very different from Lena’s. She is ‘happy.’ She is living what many would consider to be a picture perfect happy life and is on her way to marriage. The closer she gets to marriage though the more Hana finds out not everything is perfect with her match and maybe the cure didn’t work the way it was supposed to.There is that pivotal perfect point where everything converges and the big BANG occurs and although it could be considered perfect timing (and it is), the book also ends very open ended but with a strong message that was carried throughout the novel.Oh this book. This series has stolen my heart from the moment I started the first book, Delirium. This is one of those series I shouldn’t have started until the last book, Requiem, came out. I’ve spent the past two years moaning about this book series to my friend and how it killed me when I read it. That being said, Requiem didn’t let me down. At all. Even the stuff I didn’t agree with didn’t bother me because Oliver’s writing is so strong and beautiful if anything it protected me like a blanket when I wanted to cry.In my opinion it is a beautiful ending to the series. Oliver could have taken it many different ways, and in a way did by having two different alternating narrators, but it still worked. If anything, Hana who I spent most of the series ambivalent towards I ended up liking because I got her side of the story, even if I didn’t agree with everything that she did. That is how good Oliver’s writing is, even when I disagreed with a character, I understood why Oliver went there. Some moments it was uncomfortable and painful, but they were always needed.The end to this series isn’t going to make everyone happy, and it was fairly open ended to the point I want to know more, but I’m still content with this being the last book. Which seems to be a rare thing from fellow reviewers, and I find hard to believe because I know I had high expectations from this story.
