Book Review: Fever by Lauren DeStefano

Fever by Lauren DeStefano

Hardcover, 341 pages

Published February 21st 2012 by Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing 

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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. 


My Thoughts:

I haven’t really thought as to why the title of the second book is “Fever” until I felt the fever myself.

Fever follows directly after where Wither ended. Rhine and Gabriel finally escaped and are free. But just hours after, they are recaptured again, but not by Vaughn, but by a first generation lady under the name “Madame”. She runs a carnival but underneath it she sells/rents out girls and basically this is human trafficking and prostituting. I certainly did not expect this turn of event and I didn’t like where things were going but I kept on reading. Later on, they were able to escape the carnival, and the journey continues. They met people: good and bad, along the way and that’s when I finally understood why the things they went through happen. It’s to prepare them, Rhine especially, for the things she yet must fulfill. The first trial was long and painful and time-consuming, but it certainly built her character up. I must say I’m a bit sad that Gabriel was dependent on her on the first one. Rhine is given the upper hand in this novel, obviously, and she’s the super protagonist. While the closeness Rhine & Gabriel shares blossoms, I can feel the unattachment on it like it’s not real or something, i dunno why I feel that. Everything revolves around the idea that Rhine will be the key to how things will change for the world. It’s quite difficult to think of a dystopian society where everything is still the same except for the fact that the new generations die with an expiration date.

There were many times in the book that I really feel dizzy because Rhine always is in the state of delirium, if she’s not nauseous, dizzy, or high, she’s unconscious. Things like that. That’s how I understood the title “Fever”. She’s in “fever”, both physically and emotionally. Physiologically, fever is a symptom-reaction immune response by the body when it’s being attacked. And Rhine is experiencing that. The invisible and visible attacks by the main problem of the society and etc. But we find strength and hope despite the low times. The cover of the book is symbolic. The cards “empress” “emperor” and “the world” hints us of things that will come.

Second books are always the trickiest ones as they always hold the uninteresting parts in trilogies but the things that happened must really happen, honestly. And I’m glad I understood these things in the novel.

Fever is wisely written and very engaging. The turn of events were depressing but there is hope, that’s the last sentence of the book evicts. I truly can’t wait for the last book in the series.

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