I had a couple ups and downs with Requiem, but at the end of the day, I enjoyed it. It is an intense conclusion to the series, with a lot at stake, and a lot to fight for.
I really didn't like Lena for the first half of Requiem. I honestly couldn't help but think that she didn't deserve Alex's forgiveness. I didn't like how she expected things to suddenly be okay between her and Alex. I didn't like how she thought she could run back into his arms. I didn't like how she used Julian as a rebound when Alex rejected her. Anytime Alex spoke to another girl or ignored her, she'd go running into Julian's arms, as if she was trying to make Alex jealous.
"I thought you were dead," I say. "It almost killed me."
"Did it?" His voice is neutral. "You made a pretty fast recovery."
"No. You don't understand." My throat is right; I feel as though I'm being strangled. "I couldn't keep hoping, and then waking up every day and finding out it wasn't true, and you were still gone. I—I wasn't strong enough."
[...]
Finally he says, "When they took me to the crypts, I thought they were going to kill me. They didn't even bother. They just left me to die. They threw me in a cell and locked the door."
[...]
"There were days when I asked for [death]—prayed for it when I went to sleep. The belief that I would see you again, that I could find you—the hope for it—was the only thing that kept me going." He releases me and takes another step backward. "So no. I don't understand."
—Requiem by Lauren Oliver
To be fair, Lena did get better towards the end, but she was never my favourite character. She just lost my favour in Pandemonium and never quite earned it back.
Hana is the character that really shone for me in Requiem. I think I'm attracted to the girl who's being shut down and struggling to be set free. That's why I liked Lena in Delirium, and why I liked Hana in Requiem. I like sitting there rooting for the character to rebel and break free.
Mama, Mama, put me to bed
I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead
I met an Invalid, and fell for his art
He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart
—Requiem by Lauren Oliver
Hana is being pushed into horrible marriage. On the surface, Fred seemed to be the perfect husband: handsome, wealthy, and sweet, but Hana soon realizes that he's really the Bluebeard tale at work. A mysterious ex-wife who has gone missing from society, Fred's sudden threatening behaviour, and streaks of violence. Hana begins to fear for her future and doubts that her cure really worked as intended. She reveals mistakes she's made in the past, and the reason for guilt haunting her every day. I loved Hana's dark secrets, I loved seeing her perfect world come crashing down, and I loved watching her redeem herself at the end!
In some ways I do feel like the ending was a little open ended and not as satisfying as I was hoping for. For me, this series has always been about love. It started out with Lena falling in love for the first time—with Alex. But it ended up being all about the Resistance and taking down society. The Lena-Alex-Julian love triangle does kind of get resolved, but it sort of gets wrapped up in one page. I was hoping that the romance would dominate more of the book, instead of it all being about Resistance Resistance Resistance. There were no swoony moments at all in the story, and that's really what I was craving.
With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered. Freedom is exhausting.
—Requiem by Lauren Oliver
It was a bit of a bummer, and the ending really did leave me wondering, "What happens now?" It just kind of drops off. I would have enjoyed some sort of epilogue at least, to help wrap things up better and answer a few more questions.
But overall, Requiem was an enjoyable read. It didn't quite have the same magic and excitement and swoony romance that Delirium did, but I enjoyed it more than Pandemonium. I loved the strength of the Resistance, Fred's complete and utter creepiness (loved to hate it), Hana's slow progress towards fighting the cure, and Lena's growing relationship with her mother. The book is filled with bravery, fighting, loss, and love.