Fever by Dee Shulman
Puffin (April 2012) | Paperback, 400 pages
Sci-Fi Romance | Young Adult
Fever tells the story of super intelligent modern day teenager Eva and Sethos (Seth) a seventeen year old gladiator in ancient Rome. For all of you fellow time travel fans, this book has a nice bit of time travel, although perhaps not in the way I expected.
Our characters have nothing in common, other than their age, and the fact they have both suffered from an inexplicable fever. But the fever they suffer from will bring them together, even though they were born centuries apart.
It’s quite hard to write this review without too many spoilers, to reveal anything about the fever or how our characters meet, other than the fact time travel is involved I feel would give too much away. So I shall just refer to events as before the fever and after the fever.
The book is told in from two narrative points of view and is divided into three parts. Eva’s story and Seth’s story, the two main characters don’t actually meet until the third part of the book. This meant that the love story felt like it took a while to take route. There is a love story before and after the fever, and the love story before the fever didn’t quite resonate with me. It felt rushed and naive. As did Seth’s obsession with the ‘love of his life’. But ironically, although it irritated, this obsession made the second part of the love story all the more lovely.
Seth was my favourite of the two characters. He made the greatest journey throughout the novel, not only in terms of time, but in growth of character. Quite literally from gladiator to modern day schoolboy. Eva is complicated. Brilliant, but lost at the same time. She struggles throughout the story to find her place in the world. But I also like the fact that she didn’t fall into the generic high school geek-ette category (I may just have made up a word there 
). Also the relationship between her and her mother is just heart-breaking.
The actual fever part of the story was the most fascinating, what is it? Why does it happen and what is the wider implications of it? Don’t expect all of your questions to be answered! It’s a unique and intriguing concept. I like that is a different idea and hope that this is the first in a series rather than a stand-alone novel and we get to find out!
I really enjoyed this book, and actually read it quite quickly. The romance did need perhaps a little more time to be allowed to blossom, and I would have liked the main characters to have met sooner to enable to this to happen. But it was well written and packed with compelling scenes. There are few books that combine scenes from the barbaric gladiator’s arena, complicated micro-biology and high school drama and do it successfully. But Fever does.
VERDICT:
A well written and interesting start to a new series. I am quite intrigued about the Fever and the clever concept that Shulman has created. Her characters and strong and compelling and it has a lovely story full of promise.
RATING: 
DEE SHULMAN ONLINE
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4 Comments
Sounds a really intresting story.
Great review
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Thanks! It is an interesting story, I’m intrigued to see how it develops.
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Sounds good, but I’m not sure if it’s my thing, so probably won’t read it.
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If I’m honest Carolyn, it’s probably not your thing, but it was good.
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