Oh, Lauren Oliver. *sobs* I may not forgive you for this one. 
 Don't get me wrong -- the premise sounded promising. The blurb on the back sounded like it could be loads of fun. 
 But then I read the book itself ... and ... no. 
 Basically, PANIC follows the story of two teenagers -- Heather, a negative girl with low self-esteem who lives in the trailer park with her meek little sister Lily and her alcoholic mother -- and Dodge, a good-looking psychopath who is obsessed with murder and revenge. Despite the fact that they're both broke, Heather and Dodge go to a seemingly wealthy high school, full of negligent parents, where every student is required to donate a dollar a day until a lump sum of 60 something thousand dollars is amassed. Then the teenagers evade the world's dumbest cops year after year in a nonsensical game that encourages a number of dangerous crimes and occasionally ends in death (which really doesn't seem to be THAT big of a deal to these folks anyways). But, the winner gets loads of money if he or she survives, and both Heather and Dodge have decided that they must absolutely win PANIC this year. 
 Well, Heather wants to win PANIC because she blames the universe for everything, and because her mother is an alcoholic and her temporary teenage boyfriend has ruined her life by hooking up with some other random girl from school. Dodge wants to win PANIC because his older sister, of her own will and volition, participated in the game a few years back and ended up being paralyzed -- so Dodge wants to terrorize and maybe murder some guy and his brother because they may have, possibly, been playing PANIC at the same time-- or, something like that. 
 Besides that, there's Nat -- the flaky, selfish, two faced best friend, and that other guy, whose name I don't even remember (who, I guess, is written to be the prince charming of this story). Then there are a few random stupid things thrown in, like a woman who hides tigers in her house, just to add some type of sparkle and pizzazz to an otherwise tired story. 
 I can't decide which irritated me more, though -- the complete and utter ridiculousness, irresponsibility, and negligence that would have to take part to make something like PANIC exist, or the slew of totally detestable and annoying characters that just felt so unrelatable and unlikeable and just really left me apathetic to the storyline as a whole. I mean, I read the DELIRIUM books .... so, what happened? What series of events led to this terrible little book coming from such a creative and interesting author like Lauren Oliver? 
 But, just so you don't think I'm being TOO negative, I'll end this review with something positive. I love the cover. It's bold, beautiful, and striking -- and, if a completely free copy of this book fell from the sky, into my lap, and there was nobody within 50 miles or so who might need a doorstop, I would totally put PANIC on my bookshelf. 
 And, it would look fabulous!