RATED: 2 of 5 stars
I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t like this book more but I can try to pinpoint a couple things that stood out to me as I read Abbott’s erie novel, The Fever. First, the story was quite confusing since there was never a really clear reason for some aspects of it. We learn about Gabby, Lise, Skye and Deenie, a group of friends who have become distant with each other for some unknown reason in the book. They have these weird conversations that never really make any sense at all to the reader. There was an incredible amount of rambling by the characters and the author with extremely long analogies to boot. I found myself skipping over whole sentences when the writer would say “it’s like when your…”. The excessive use of “like” should have been caught by any decent editor. In my opinion, it took away from the story even though it was supposed to be from the mindset of teenagers. The book has differing viewpoints from Tom, Deenie’s Dad and high school teacher at the school Deenie and her friends attend. He’s a little strange and not really likable by the end of the book for me at all. Then there’s Eli, the hearthrob hockey player and brother of Deenie, that really just seems like an after thought of the book. I couldn’t fingure out why he was needed until the very end (and that sucked to read over 200 pages and not be enthralled by him in the least bit). Then there’s Deenie herself who was the most interesting character but unfortunately couldn’t pull the whole book off by herself. I didn’t find any characters to identify with, like or even care about. So it was a struggle to read many days. In the end, the last couple chapters helped put some theories to bed and gave a simple ending to the story. The only jolt of emotion I recieved from this book was when I was extremely happy to be done with it. Not a fave and probably won’t remember this one by tomorrow.
Raging Book Reviews 