Review: Fever by Lauren DeStefano

Fever

Author: Lauren DeStefano

Publication Date: February 21st, 2012

Publisher: Simon & Shuster Children's Publishing

Genre: YA/Dystopia/Romance

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Synopsis:

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.

My Thoughts: Although I did enjoy this book, I didn't quite enjoy it as much as I did the first book Wither, you can find my review for that here.

This book had pretty much the same pace and same amount of action and excitement which was good. I really liked the kind of slow but still very intriguing pace of the first book. Normally I would not be one to be a fan of a laid back pace in a book. But this series seems to pull it off really well. It's not action packed and exciting things aren't necessarily happening in every chapter. But there is always great character development and Rhine has an inner dialogue that is never boring and a personality that is entirely admirable.

The story starts off right where Wither left off. Rhine and Gabriel have escaped from the mansion and are heading to what they think will be a much better life. But oh, they were so wrong. Things are not all hunky dory outside those gates. Things are much more terrifying, corrupted, and down right filthy. They are almost immediately taken captive by a rather disgusting group of people and they spend the majority of the book trying to figure out how to escape yet again. Meanwhile, Gabriel and Rhine both are fighting a sickness that is definitely complicating the matter of escaping.

The one thing that made me like this book a little less than the previous one is definitely that it felt rather repetitive throughout the story. Rhine was constantly passing in and out of consciousness for different reasons. But it was always the same effect of her passing out and coming too and thinking about how badly she needs to change the current situation and to get away from her horrible nightmares. Lots of things changed around her during the course of the story, but her own predicament stayed about the same and it got a little monotonous to me.

But it was still a pretty great read and I will definitely continue on to the last book in the trilogy. Especially since things really started to get heated up and exciting towards the very end! Definitely a cliff hanger of an ending and I will be needing to get my hands on the next book in the series,  Sever.

I would still recommend this book and the series, especially to Dystopian fans. It is also a romance novel, but the romance in this book of the series was pretty limited.  I am definitely looking forward to what will happen romance wise in the final book!