Hey guys, Alexia here :). Today I'm going to be doing the review of 'The Fever' by Meg Abbott. I hope you like it. My goodreads and social medias are under the review.
I gave it a 3 stars on Goodreads.
The follows this girl, Deenie and her family, her dad Tom, and her older brother Eli. After a mysterious illness strikes Deenie's best friend from childhood, Lise, and she is left in a comatose state, the town goes wild. Slowly more and more girls are being effected and no one knows how - is it the polluted river? The vaccine's? Boys? No one knows.
I really enjoyed this book, I think it has a really unique plot line and I did not expect the ending, although in hindsight it was a bit more obvious than I originally thought. The writing story was a bit off putting, as it was not clear who's point of view it was - whether the father, the brother or Deenie's, I would have liked the style more if it was not weirdly set out.
In other books, the story would have been following why people were getting ill, how they were, but in 'The Fever' it follows the reaction of the illness - the hysteria from the girls, the boys wondering whether it was them, through sexual intercourse or actions and being blamed by parents, and the parents who have a full spectrum of theories, from political theories and to the polluted river and many more. I loved how the book showed the hysteria and worry of the characters instead of trying to find the cause of it through the whole book; it makes it very realistic, because if this happened in real life (It is based on a true story but more on that later), people wouldn't be looking for the answer they would be panicking - not everyone can be a book character.
I loved the characters whose point of view we see, especially the brother. I wish we could have had the characters be more in depth and personal instead of just skimming against the surface which I felt like the author, Meg Abbott, was doing through the whole book. The book is full of teenage angst, Deenie who has started feeling and seeing things sexually, and Eli, who has had his fair share, but has stopped and started worrying over his little sister and what she may be doing and whether she will get ill.
Tom and Eli are watching Deenie like a time bomb, to see whether she will get ill while she tries to fix things when three of her friends have the illness. I love the sense of family you get whilst reading the book and I wish I could've had more. I feel though that were somethings that were left unexplained, and I suppose that is supposed to be for 'mystery' but instead it has just bothered me.
This actually happened in a town called 'Le Roy' were girls in a school started getting ticks and no one knew how and 'The Fever' was based on what happened and while reading the article you can see the similarities to the book and what actually happened. If you are going to read the book I would not suggest reading the article first. The article is: http://www.nytimess.com/2012/03/11/magazine/teenage-girls-twitching-le-roy.html?pagewanted=all
It did take me a long time to get into it due to the writing style, but in the end I got there and I really enjoyed it.
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