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.

Teaser Tuesdays.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Lover Reborn (Black Dagger Brotherhood #10)

by J.R. Ward

And now here he was, empty just like the dress, because what had filled both him and this gown was gone.

The tears that came out of his eyes were silent, the kind that seeped out and soaked the pillow, traveling over the bridge of his nose and falling free to drop one after another like rain from the lip of a roof.

In My Mailbox (21).

In My Mailbox Is A Weekly Meme Hosted By Kristi The Story Siren.

Review.

Muse (Mercy #3) - Rebecca Lim (Harper Collins Australia)

Balthazar - Claudia Gray (Harper Collins Australia)

Brought.

A Temptation Of Angels - Michelle Zink

Grave Mercy (His Fair Assassin #1) - Robin LaFevers

The Kane Chronicles Survival Guide - Rick Riordan

Wanted: Undead Or Alive (Love At Stake #12) - Kerrelyn Sparks

Goddess Interrupted (Goddess Test #2) - Aimee Carter

Ashes Of Angels - Michele Hauf

Some Girls Bite (Chicagoland Vampires #1) - Chloe Neill

Friday Night Bites (Chicagoland Vampires #2) - Chloe Neill

Twice Bitten (Chicagoland Vampires #3) - Chloe Neill

Hard Bitten (Chicagoland Vampires #4) - Chloe Neill

Drink Deep (Chicagoland Vampires #5) - Chloe Neill

Awaken (Awaken #1) - Katie Kacvinsky

Luminous - Dawn Metcalf

Blood Magic (The Blood Journals #1) - Tessa Gratton

Above - Leah Bobet

Possession (Possession #1) - Elana Johnson

Book Review (69).

Wither (The Chemical Garden #1)

by Lauren DeStefano

Publication: 22nd March 2011

Publisher: Simon And Schuster Books

Pages: 358

Genre: Dystopian

Age Appropriate: Young Adult

By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children. When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can’t bring herself to hate him as much as she’d like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband’s strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape--before her time runs out?Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

My Thoughts.

What first drew me to this book was the cover it's gorgeous and I congratulate whoever came up with it, it's beautiful and after reading the book I understand the bird in the cage which is on the front cover.

I was a bit weary at first of reading this book, polygamous marriages don't really do it for me and the fact that Rhine was forced into it didn't exactly want to make me rush out a procure a copy straight away, so I did buy it and it sat on my bookshelf for a very long time before I decided to give it a go after reading quite a lot of positive reviews, and you know what? I absolutely loved it!

Rhine and her twin brother Rohan live in a world where females die at the age of twenty and males at twenty-five after the cure for cancer was discovered and then messed up the life span expectancy of the generations born after them, so that is why polygamous marriages are happening (even the President has nine wives), Rhine is taken by a group of Gatherer's who's job it is to find young girls to be sold to the highest bidder (those girls not chosen either get sold into prostitution or killed), Rhine gets taken and is sold with two other girls to Linden Ashby a rich man who wants to replace his one and only dying wife with them.

When they arrive they are locked in their rooms, Rhine finds her door unlocked one day and finds her way to Linden's dying wife Rose's  bedroom and she notices how alike they look and they become friends until she ultimately dies.

Linden marries Rhine and the two other girls Jenna and Cecily who is only too eager to consummate the marriage the only problem with this? Linden is twenty-one and Cecily only thirteen I had a lot of trouble with that especially when she ends up pregnant soon after that, Rhine manages in the year she's there to never consummate the marriage which I also find unbelievable as her being there to procreate was the reason of being taken in the first place.

Rhine takes a shine to one of the servants Gabriel who's job it is to bring Rhine her meals and they soon both fall for each other and she tells him her plans of escape and how she wants him to go with her.

Of course every story has to have an evil person in it and that role belongs to Linden's father Vaughn a doctor who has a lab down in the basement where he likes to experiment and dissect dead people including Rose, of course all of this is unknown to Linden who is under control of his father and does whatever he says.

It's about Rhine's desperate struggle to escape and reunite with her brother that's the main part of the storyline while outwitting the cunning Vaughn who seems to know her every move.

This is one of my favourite books so far this year, I can't say enough good things about it, so I'm now off to see what the sequel will bring hopefully a happier storyline.

I give this 5/5.

Feature And Follow Friday (21).

Q: Do you read one book at a time or do you switch back and forth between two or more?

I definitely read only one book at a time because otherwise I confuse myself and I'd rather pay all my attention to one book at a time and I find I enjoy it more.

Waiting On Wednesday.

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event hosted by Breaking The Spine where you can spotlight an upcoming release that you're eagerly anticipating.

This week I'm waiting on....

Etiquette & Espionage (The Finishing School #1)

                                  by Gail Carriger

February 2013

It's one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It's quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to finishing school. 

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is the bane of her mother's existence. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper etiquette at tea--and god forbid anyone see her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. She enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine's Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality. 

But little do Sophronia or her mother know that this is a school where ingenious young girls learn to finish, all right--but it's a different kind of finishing. Mademoiselle Geraldine's certainly trains young ladies in the finer arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but also in the other kinds of finishing: the fine arts of death, diversion, deceit, espionage, and the modern weaponries. Sophronia and her friends are going to have a rousing first year at school. 

First in a four book YA series set 25 years before the Parasol Protectorate but in the same universe.

The Darkest Minds

by Alexandra Bracken

18th December 2012 Disney Hyperion

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something frightening enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have been cursed with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control. 

Now sixteen, Ruby has spent nearly half her life desperately trying to hide the fact that she’s outwitted the camp’s sorting system—that she isn’t powerless, or safe. She’s one of the dangerous ones… and everyone knows what happens to them. 

When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her—East River. She joins a group of teens who escaped their own camp, pursued along the way by terrifying bounty hunters. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close to him. Not after what happened to her parents. 

When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Before the end, Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living

Crewel (Crewel World #1)

by Gennifer Albin

16th October 2012 Farrar Strauss & Giroux

Incapable. Awkward. Artless. 

That’s what the other girls whisper behind her back. But sixteen year-old Adelice Lewys has a secret: she wants to fail. 

Gifted with the ability to weave time with matter, she’s exactly what the Guild is looking for, and in the world of Arras, being chosen as a Spinster is everything a girl could want. It means privilege, eternal beauty, and being something other than a secretary. It also means the power to embroider the very fabric of life. But if controlling what people eat, where they live and how many children they have is the price of having it all, Adelice isn’t interested. 

Not that her feelings matter, because she slipped and wove a moment at testing, and they’re coming for her—tonight. 

Now she has one hour to eat her mom’s overcooked pot roast. One hour to listen to her sister’s academy gossip and laugh at her Dad’s stupid jokes. One hour to pretend everything’s okay. And one hour to escape. 

Because once you become a Spinster, there’s no turning back.

Beta (Beta #1)

by Rachel Cohn

16th October 2012 Disney Hyperion

In a world constructed to absolute perfection, imperfection is difficult to understand—and impossible to hide. 

Elysia is a clone, created in a laboratory, born as a sixteen year old girl, an empty vessel with no life experience to draw from. She is a Beta, an experimental model of teenaged clone. She was replicated from another teenage girl, who had to die in order for Elysia to be created. 

Elysia's purpose is to serve the inhabitants of Demesne, an island paradise for the wealthiest people on earth. Everything about Demesne is bioengineered for perfection. Even the air there induces a strange, euphoric high that only the island's workers—soulless clones like Elysia—are immune to. 

At first, Elysia's new life on this island paradise is idyllic and pampered. But she soon sees that Demesne's human residents, the most privileged people in the world who should want for nothing, yearn. And, she comes to realize that beneath its flawless exterior, there is an undercurrent of discontent amongst Demesne's worker clones. She knows she is soulless and cannot feel and should not care—so why are overpowering sensations clouding Elysia's mind? 

If anyone discovers that Elysia isn't the unfeeling clone she must pretend to be, she will suffer a fate too terrible to imagine. When Elysia's one chance at happiness is ripped away from her with breathtaking cruelty, emotions she's always had but never understood are unleashed. As rage, terror, and desire threaten to overwhelm her, Elysia must find the will to survive.

Velveteen (Velveteen #1)

by Daniel Marks

9th October 2012 Random House Cildren's Books

Velveteen Monroe is dead. At 16, she was kidnapped and murdered by a madman named Bonesaw. But that's not the problem.

The problem is she landed in purgatory. And while it's not a fiery inferno, it's certainly no heaven. It's gray, ashen, and crumbling more and more by the day, and everyone has a job to do. Which doesn't leave Velveteen much time to do anything about what's really on her mind.

Bonesaw.

Velveteen aches to deliver the bloody punishment her killer deserves. And she's figured out just how to do it. She'll haunt him for the rest of his days. 
It'll be brutal . . . and awesome.

But crossing the divide between the living and the dead has devastating consequences. Velveteen's obsessive haunting cracks the foundations of purgatory and jeopardizes her very soul. A risk she's willing to take—except fate has just given her reason to stick around: an unreasonably hot and completely off-limits coworker.

Velveteen can't help herself when it comes to breaking rules . . . or getting revenge. And she just might be angry enough to take everyone down with her. 

Luminosity (Luminosity #1)

by Stephanie Thomas

13th November 2012 Entangled Publishing

My name is Beatrice. When I was born, I was blessed with the Sight. I was immediately removed from my parents and enrolled in the Institution. At the age of twelve, I had my first true vision, earning my raven’s wings. And when I turned seventeen, one of my visions came true. Things haven’t been the same since. 

The Institution depends on me to keep the City safe from our enemy, the Dreamcatchers, but I’m finding it harder to do while keeping a secret from everyone, including my best friend Gabe. It is a secret that could put us all in danger. A secret that could kill me and everyone close to me. 

The enemy has been coming to me in my dreams, and I think I'm falling in love with him. He says they're coming. He says they're angry. And I think I've already helped them win.

10 Book Covers With.....

Fangs.