It's a Dark, Dark World

"'I never wanted to live forever,' she says. 'I just wanted enough time.'"
--Lauren DeStefano, Fever

Genre: YA Dystopia

Publisher: Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing, 341 pages

Publication Date: February 21st, 2012

Source: Bought
Goodreads
Previous Books in Series: Wither

Goodreads Description

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

*POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD FOR WITHER*

So I really liked Wither, the ending was complete to me but also open for development. I was excited to see where this story went. The story went into a black tunnel. Not a bad black tunnel, but black in a way that this story turns down very dark roads. Wow. I’m gonna be brief and not very descriptive as to not ruin the plot for those who haven’t read it.

The scarlet district. Scary. As. Hell. The topic of drugs and addiction is prevalent in this installment and how it was handled was terrifyingly real. What I liked about this entire book was the honest of the absolute hopelessness of their situation. This book was not a happy one and I am okay with that. While I do think that a good amount of the second book felt like a little bit of a filler in between the beginning (book 1) and the end (book 3), I feel like book 2 served a decent purpose. I think it helped us realize how dire this world really is. Rhine survived on the hope of escaping the mansion only to find out that the world is not the way she romanticized it in her head. I could feel the sheer desperation of Gabriel and Rhine and while it was so sad to see them go through everything they did, it helped us see how brutal this world is.

I still really like Rhine but I did feel she and Gabriel both were emotionally stunted in this book. I wanted passion, I wanted fire, I wanted undying proclamations of love and survival. While I do believe these two will protect each other at any cost, I didn’t really feel the emotion behind it. I REALLY hope we get some sparks flying in Sever because I want some passionate swooning.

I know this review so far might make it sound like I didn’t like the book and that is SO not the case. I really liked it but it is not an easy read. Dark, brutal, terrifying, hopeless and desperate are just a few words that came to mind while reading. But I liked this. It felt real. It felt honest. It felt like a true dystopia.

Should You Read This? Yes. I thought this was a good second book and follow-up to Wither but I wanted a few more intimate moments between Gabriel and Rhine and a little more emotional development all around.