Book Review (70).

Fever (The Chemical Garden #2)

by Lauren DeStefano

Publication: 21st February 2012

Publisher: Simon And Schuster 

Pages: 341

Genre: Dystopian

Age Appropriate: Young Adult

**Warning Contain's Spoilers From The Previous Book**

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.

My Thoughts.

I loved the first book in this series Wither and was excited to start this book as soon as I'd finished the first one, unfortunately although I really liked this book I felt it was lacking something that I can't quite put my finger on.

The book takes up straight after the ending from the first book and Rhine and Gabriel are on the run, and straight away run into some bad luck in the shape of a carnival (a cover for a brothel type establishment) and it's owner , Gabriel spends his whole time there drugged while Rhine is enlisted by the owner to entice the gentlemen in.

It's not long before the awful owner figures out that she can make a lot of money by selling Rhine off to the Gatherers, but Vaughn finds her there and after a close call she and Gabriel escape again.

They eventually make it back to Rhine's home to find it destroyed and Rowan nowhere to be found, Gabriel has become addicted to the drugs he was given at the carnival and they have taken charge of a mute and deformed girl Maddie a daughter of one of the prostitutes from the carnival who while trying to escape got captured.

Rhine starts to get really sick and starts displaying the same symptoms that afflicted Jenna in the first book and nothing seems to help until the arrival at an orphanage they're staying at of Vaughn, who threatens to burn the place down with everybody in it if she doesn't go with him.

So let's just say Rhine gets a personal tour of Vaughn's dungeon below the mansion and ends up as a guinea pig for his experiments, she does reunite with Cecily, Deidre and Linden.

And the ending was really good but having to wait till next year to find out what happen's next will not be fun.

This book didn't have the suspense of the last book while in the first one you were wondering how she was ever going to find a way to escape from the mansion there was also the interaction from the other characters whom barely appeared in this book and I didn't find the parts at the carnival or the orphanage all that exciting and I didn't really like Gabriel in this book at all.

But I will definitely be buying the next book and I hope I like it better than this one.

I give this 4/5.