What a stunningly beautiful book. It is so simple and pure and well, beautiful. I've heard that the second book complicates matters but if you take it as a book, I don't think that I would have been unhappy if it had just been a standalone book. 
 I like Lauren Oliver's style. Sometimes the best stories are the simple ones where everything is the same apart from one small change - in this case the fact that love is seen as a disease. And it is something I think that anyone who has fallen in love can understand. I found myself smiling tightly at the symptoms of love and the pain that comes along hand in hand with it. I think many of us have laid awake at night wishing that we could extinguish that part of us that feels so deeply. 
 That said, the concern of Lena's aunt and uncle confused me - why were they so concerned? If the guardians of someone who had the disease where dealt with harshly, maybe I could understand it, but it didn't seem that this happened - there might be the humiliation but it seemed to be quite common that under 18s would experiment 'inappropriately' - so why try and prevent someone from experiencing something when without love, you cannot possibly care about what happens to them. If they are as detached as they are meant to be, why are they bothered about Lena? Is it guilt? And here's my question - are love and guilt mutually exclusive? Why do we feel guilty? It surely must be because we love or we don't want to let people down. Very interesting philosophical questions. 
 I can't find much to fault about Lena. And I adore Alex. That boy is something special. I loved the excerpts at the beginning of each chapter - both from 'real' books and books from the world that had been created. Take it from someone with a cold dead heart - this is a beautiful book that will make your own cold dead heart try to beat again.