Review: Fever: Chemical Garden Trilogy #2

By 7:00 AM , , ,


 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

(Synopsis from Goodreads)

 In Lauren DeStefano’s even more beautiful sequel, FEVER, we are transported back into the dystopian “America” that DeStefano created in WITHER. When Rhine and Gabriel emerge from their watery escape from Linden’s prison they find themselves on the shore of what was once South Carolina. 

Emerging from the water thinking they’re finally safe Rhine and Rowan soon find themselves in the twisted, carnival world of Madame. Madame is this formerly, beautiful mistress of what seems to be, for lack of a better phrase, whore house of sorts. The carnival setting is my favorite in this book. With tents that surround the decaying wonderland that are different shades of different colors, it’s an inviting wonderment of carnal and exciting things. 

After a talk with Madame, Rhine and Gabriel are now working for this place. Gabriel is put in the security aspect.  Rhine, of course, is put in the more known profession in this place. Madame also changes her name to Goldenrod because it’s more befitting and she “seems” like a Goldenrod because of her beautiful blond hair.
So that is how this sequel begins and even though I do love this series, it kind of goes downhill after (SPOILER ALERT) their escape from the carnival when Vaughn finds them. 

By the way I’m going to spoil the rest of the book right now so if you haven’t read it go read it because the ending is a pretty good cliffhanger and it’s worth the draggy middle.

THE OBLIGATRORY SPOILER ALERT WARNING!

Rhine and Gabriel run away with a little malformed girl named, Maddie, who is this girl who worked for Madame’s daughter. She was ill treated by everyone but her mother and Rhine and Gabriel. They run away to Manhattan to see if they can find Rowan, Rhine’s brother. All they find is the burned remains of Rhine’s childhood home. They stay with who we find out is Maddie’s grandmother for about a year. During this Rhine gets extremely sick, which they think is the flu, but then Vaughn shows up AGAIN!

He reveals to us that when Rhine lived in the mansion he was slowly experimenting on her with this new drug he was testing. Her illness was a dependency withdrawal. She goes back with Vaughn and ALL of our suspicions are confirmed and Vaughn is evil and he’s trying to perfect people still.

So that’s basically the whole book I’m not going to reveal the end because after that LENGTHY middle it was a great vision of hope for Rhine to go on.

All I can say is that I hope the third and final chapter, that we know of, of this trilogy is better than this one.

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2 comments

  1. Thank you for the honest review. I loved the first book and stopped reading this one about half way through. I have been meaning to go back to. I will eventually.

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  2. Bought this book for my significant other. She blew through it in less than a week. Great buy for an avid reader!

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