Pip has known and liked Sal since childhood he’d supported her when she was being bullied in middle school. There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.Įveryone believes that Salil Singh killed his girlfriend, Andrea Bell, five years ago-except Pippa Fitz-Amobi. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends.

Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.Īutumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart their mothers are still best friends. Readers who want to know more about the causes and effects of the mysterious virus will have to wait for the third installment, purposefully set up by another rushed ending. (Dystopian romance. Their constant running and hiding overshadow the interesting questions about the ethics of science, relationships, sexuality and power raised in the first book. Instead, the repetitive story, filled with too many similar dream sequences and nearly nonstop illnesses, falls flat, and readers may wonder at times if Rhine and Gabriel even like each other. And finally being able to communicate freely should bring out the intimacy between Rhine and Gabriel. Plotting another escape from a heartless 'First Generation' who runs a brothel out of an abandoned carnival site, continuing to evade Vaughn, picking up a malformed and mute girl and trying to find Rhine’s twin brother should be adventurous. Having recently escaped the compound where she was forced to marry, take on sister wives and ultimately become her evil father-in-law Vaughn’s scientific experiment in the name of finding a cure for the virus that kills off men and women at a young age, Rhine, along with former servant and love interest Gabriel, finds herself in trouble again. The atmospheric worldbuilding, moral dilemmas and romantic possibilities of Wither (2011) never heat up in this, the second novel in the dystopian Chemical Garden Trilogy.

Fever by Lauren DeStefano