I'll be honest: I almost put this one down after the first couple pages. Even now that I've finished it, I'm not hooked on the premise. It's a society that's deemed love as a disease, which forces people to undergo a procedure (essentially lobotomy) to rid themselves of it when they reach adulthood. Lena is seventeen, and she's counting down the days until her own procedure, and you just know what's going to happen. 
 But during Lena's botched evaluation, you consider maybe this story will work. 
 Alex, our romantic love interest, ignites the spark of Lena's rebellion. She resists at first, but slowly finds herself consumed by the disease. If this story was just Alex, I'd have thrown it across the room. But little by little, Lena understands that she loves others, too, an affection she has to conceal from everyone. Because this society doesn't just cure its people of romantic love--it's all love. And Lena probably should've seen that she was infected from the start, when she was missing her mother who died years prior. 
 It's the non-romantic relationships that make this story. Alex... I can take him or leave him. But there's Lena's "unnatural" love for her mother. And her affection for Hana, the best friend, which they know will fade once they undergo the procedure. And Lena doesn't want to lose either of these, either. There's one point that she almost tells Hana that she loves her, and you know there's no hope of her being cured of the disease. 
 And the ending: (view spoiler)[The ending is wonderful. Lena and Alex plan to run away together, and are caught, and Lena gets away--but he doesn't. There are hints everywhere that this was going to happen; Lena says time and time again that she'd rather die on her terms than live on theirs. Granted, she's not the one who dies, but that's what makes it powerful. (hide spoiler)] 
 Lena and Alex's romance has little basis, and Alex is a little too perfect in the way of YA love interests, but it's everything else in this story that makes it work. 
 I'm skeptical about reading the sequel, though. I don't know if I loved this world that much to continue reading about it.