Fever

Title: Fever

Author: Lauren DeStefano

Rating: 2 stars

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.

Spoiler Alert!
Review: DeStefano has created a disturbing future where everyone dies by the age of 20 or 25. Also, there was lots of needles and cutting and blood. I'm going to have nightmares for weeks now. I wasn't keen on reading this book because I hadn't really liked Wither, but it was on the shelf so I was like "Why not?" I have discovered several reasons. Here is a condensed synopsis of the book: Rhine and Gabriel escape, they get stuck in an even scarier place than the mansion, they take turns being deathly sick, they escape, and then the last hundred pages or so is a detailed account of Rhine's mysterious illness. DeStefano tries to keep us guessing: Will Rhine die? Or will she survive? Fever is the second book in a trilogy; you can't kill off the main character in the middle of the series. So... Suspense Fail! There's a cliff-hanger ending (Rhine's brother Rowan had left their house and Rhine recognizes him on TV at the very end) but I really don't care to read the third book.