Fever by Lauren DeStefano

Summary:
Rhine and Gabriel have escaped the mansion, but danger is never far behind.
Running away brings Rhine and Gabriel right into a trap, in the form of a twisted carnival whose ringmistress keeps watch over a menagerie of girls. Just as Rhine uncovers what plans await her, her fortune turns again. With Gabriel at her side, Rhine travels through an environment as grim as the one she left a year ago - surroundings that mirror her own feelings of fear and hopelessness.

The two are determined to get to Manhattan, to relative safety with Rhine’s twin brother, Rowan. But the road there is long and perilous - and in a world where young women only live to age twenty and young men die at twenty-five, time is precious. Worse still, they can’t seem to elude Rhine’s father-in-law, Vaughn, who is determined to bring Rhine back to the mansion...by any means necessary.

In the sequel to Lauren DeStefano’s harrowing Wither, Rhine must decide if freedom is worth the price - now that she has more to lose than ever. (from GoodReads)

Review:
Fever and I have an interesting relationship. I didn't like it at first, then I liked it. I also think it wasn't as good as Wither, but I'm excited to see what happens next in Sever.

As I just said, I did not like the beginning of Fever at all. The creepy carnival and the character of Madame could have been really interesting, but I just couldn't get into it. I also felt like I was missing out on details - at one point I actually flipped back to see if I skipped a page or something. With the beginning portion of Fever, I felt like things weren't explained. For example, a new character Jared is introduced out of nowhere without any information. So that really dampened my initial impression of the book.

But when Rhine and Gabriel eventually leave the carnival, things start getting better. I don't want to spoil what happens but it's interesting seeing where they go and how the world has changed from the one we currently live in. I do wish Gabriel would have a little more character development. It's like he's just tagging along with Rhine for the heck of it.

Even though the ending half was better, there was one specific thing I didn't like: there were a lot of hallucinations and altered consciousness. There is a solid ten pages of Rhine detailing these to the reader and I thought it was a little much. It didn't really do anything for the story and actually got a little boring.

Even though Fever was nowhere as good as Wither (I also think the cover can be an indication of this - I liked Wither's ten times better), I'm still looking forward to Sever because Fever leaves off on a giant cliffhanger! Who would have guessed? I am curious to see how everything ends because in this world, girls' life expectancy is 20 years and Rhine is 17. I'm wondering if there will be a happy ending? We shall see.

Rating: 7 out of 10.
FTC: borrowed from library.

2012/Simon & Schuster/341 pages.