Review: Hana - Delirium Novella - Lauren Oliver

Review: Hana - Book #1.5 Delirium Series - Lauren Oliver - December 2011

I have a confession to make. This book had been sitting on my Kindle since January 2012, quietly waiting, until now. Sometimes a story finds you exactly when it's meant to, and picking up Hana after all these years felt less like reading a novella and more like stepping back through a door I didn't know I'd left open.

Reading it transported me straight back to 2010–2012, that golden era when dystopian YA ruled every bookshelf and every teenage heart. It also brought back a memory I treasure, organising a Zoom call with Lauren Oliver herself for a teen reading finale at Tauranga Libraries, right here in little ol' New Zealand. Talk about full circle.

Hana gives us the summer before the cure, told from the other side of the friendship at the heart of Delirium. While Lena is pulling away from the noise and risk of the underground world, Hana is doing the opposite  chasing every last taste of freedom before it's taken from her forever. Wild music, secret parties, a first kiss she'll never be allowed to remember fondly once she's cured. There's something so tender and aching about watching a girl fall in love with being alive right before the world plans to switch that feeling off.

But Hana's summer isn't only rebellion. On the surface, she's the picture of compliance  meeting her approved match Fred Hargrove, glimpsing the quiet, safe, colourless life waiting for her. Lauren Oliver does something quite special here: she lets us feel Hana torn between two versions of herself, terrified of stepping out of line and equally terrified of disappearing into it.

For fans of the Delirium series , this is a lovely, bittersweet companion piece  it fills in the shape of Lena and Hana's friendship from the other side of the mirror, and it works beautifully as a way in for new readers too.

Reading this one felt like reconnecting with an old friend I'd let drift for far too long, much like Lena and Hana themselves. If your own copy has been gathering digital dust, consider this your sign. Some stories are worth the wait.

Amazon: https://amzn.to/4gL1JFO