Teaser Tuesdays: wk4

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!

I'm currently reading two books.

And the houses along the snow-filled road display their illuminations. Their promise of warm shelter is nearly inescapable...to animals, insects...and to humans alike.

pg 138 of Mushishi vol 4 by Urushibara Yuki

~-.-~

I kept looking for her the rest of that day, puzzled by her reaction. Like most people, I had no clue of her random connection to Hannah Baker.

Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher (not sure the exact page of the book, since I'm reading the ebook version of this)

Leave a link to your teaser tuesdays and I'll be sure to check them out!

Review: Fever by Lauren DeStefano

Synopsis:

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.

Pages: 352 pages (Hardcover)
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Released: February 21, 2012

...not really sure what happened here.

After I finished Wither, I knew the first thing I needed to do was to read Fever...actually, the first thing I wanted to do was go to bed, since it was late at night. But once I woke up, I knew I would have to read Fever.

Fever takes place right after Wither ends and somehow, it just didn't do anything for me. My problems with Rhine were intensified in this novel and while I could forgive and overlook her behaviour before, I just couldn't do it here.

The main reason was, some of the stuff just didn't make sense at all.

Rhine wants to do something, but someone else ends up helping her. No, not really helping her. They actually do everything and Rhine just has to listen to them. This is fine with me though. What bothered me was the lack of sex. Hear me out.

In Wither, she never consummated her marriage with Linden, which I always had a problem with. He has sex with Cecily and Jenna, but not Rhine. Why? He respects her wishes, which was great. He's a good guy, but it still didn't make sense.

In Fever, Rhine is captured and placed in a prostitution ring. You think she's going to have sex, because her job is to have sex or be beaten, but it doesn't happen. Why? With Linden, I get that he's a good guy and wants to respect her. But Madame. She beats little kids, her girls, and drugs them. She doesn't seem like the type to just say, "It's okay Rhine. No sex pour vous."

I know you may be thinking something weird about me, but before I say anything more, let me just mention that I'm not a sex fiend or want to see Rhine get it on.

I don't.

But in both of those scenarios, Rhine having sex is something that is expected to happen, especially with how this world is. Instead, both Linden and Madame let her go. Linden has sex with his other wives, Madame gets the other girls to have sex with the paying customers, and Rhine thinks of ways to escape.

I dunno, it didn't make sense to me.

Anyways, let's talk about romance. Gabriel seems like the main guy, except he really doesn't do much in Fever. I feel bad, because even though I liked Linden more than him in the first novel, I excepted him to have a greater role in Fever. This sadly doesn't happen. Nothing happens to him and at the end of everything, he's not even in the picture anymore.

Overall:

I think by biggest problem with Fever is that it truly felt like a middle book. Wither was excellent and Fever, nothing happens. They run, get captured, get drugged up, run away, get sick, find a good place, get captured, cliffhanger......joy. Seeing the world and realizing that it wasn't as good as she remembered would have added some conflict between Rhine and Gabriel. Seeing how horrible the world is, would add more conflict in this book. Gabriel doing something would have added conflict in this book. Gatherers, who should be on the streets, looking for young girls and see the girls get captured, would add more conflict to this book.

I just wanted something more and sadly, I didn't get it. That being said, I do have high hopes for the next novel in this series. Once it comes out, I'm definitely picking it up and seeing how this trilogy ends. Can't wait!

Review: Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Synopsis:

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?

Pages: 368 pages (Hardcover)
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Released: March 22, 2011

Can I just start by saying that this book was fantastic? Because it was. It really, really was.

When I opened the book and read the first chapter, I knew that this was going to be a great book. The plot can be summed up in two sentences. *ahem* Rhine is captured and is bought by a Housemaster who marries her, along with two other girls. She wants to go back to her brother, but must play by the rules in order to find the perfect moment to escape.

From this summary, you will probably realize one thing. This book, mostly takes place in a house. A rich house. Despite this being a dystopian novel we don't really get a sense of this, because of the location. There are hints, for example the first chapter when the Gatherers show up, when certain characters die, despite their young age, and when Rhine tells us about how Rowan and her survived out in Manhattan. Other than this, not so much is shown.

So if you are looking for a heavy dystopian novel, this one might get you disappointed. But you should still give it a try.

The characters, for the most part, are fleshed out nicely. I do think Rhine was slightly naive about her situation, but she's young so I forgave her. I did love Rhine's sister wives, Jenna and Cecily, though. Jenna was a fantastic character, who was smart, observant, and knew how to play the game. Cecily, while naive like Rhine, did show that she's observant and can make things happen for her.

I liked the interactions between the sister wives and their husband. Linden, despite some of his problems, made for a better love interest than Gabriel.

Overall:

I really loved this book. So much so that once I finished, I went out and got Fever. Yay! In terms of dystopian novels, this is different, but it does have a good premise and an interesting story.

I liked it!