There was definitely a lot of hype about this book and overall it was good. I've never read anything by Lauren Oliver and the premise of this book was intriguing so I gave it a try. If you're a dystopian fan then you should give this a read sometime. 
 The main character, Lena, bugged me though. She was so set on getting the cure and being good, making sure not to get in trouble and living the life she believed was "normal". I understand she had a troubled past which she feared, but being so one-sided was really irritating. I've read a lot of books where the girl is naive and clueless and then has her world flipped upside down and she slowly matures and does something great. This is basically like that. Obviously, it would take a boy to change her and make her see the errors in her thinking and way of life. The love affair between her and Alex did seem kind of shallow, not really going on much before they fall in love, but he is the one to open her eyes to reality and since it is so life-changing I suppose that's the depth they share. 
 Oliver's writing was good and I liked how she painted this world without love, sort of like a somber, conformist world where people are forced to believe in only one way of life. I enjoyed how she transformed love into a disease and the symptoms are so true of a person in love, I chuckled whenever it came up. 
 What I enjoyed most about this book were the quotes and verses at the beginning of each chapter. They all related to the story in some way, but I also recognized some I've heard before and it was very cleverly placed and I could see how it played with the theme of the story. Honestly, I didn't really get into the book until the very end. It wasn't until then that I was flying through the pages to see what would happen next. The flow of the story was very slow and it took me awhile to get through the book. You definitely have to go through a lot of background story and ramblings thoughts before you get to the action-packed ending that I loved. Once I finished that last page, I was left in shock and was so upset I didn't have the second book to see what happens next.