Title: Sever
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Publisher/Year: Simon & Schuster 12/31/13
Length: 400 Pages
Series: The Chemical Garden #3
Overview
Time is running out for Rhine in the conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Chemical Garden Trilogy.
With time ticking until the virus takes its toll, Rhine is desperate for answers. After enduring Vaughn’s worst, Rhine finds an unlikely ally in his brother, an eccentric inventor named Reed, and she takes refuge in his dilapidated house. However, the people she left behind refuse to stay in the past. While Gabriel haunts Rhine’s memories, Cecily is determined to be at Rhine’s side, even if Linden’s feelings are still caught between them.
Meanwhile, Rowan’s growing involvement in an underground resistance compels Rhine to reach him before he does something that cannot be undone. But what she discovers along the way has alarming implications for her future—and on the past her parents never had the chance to explain.
In this breathtaking conclusion to Lauren DeStefano’s Chemical Garden trilogy, everything Rhine knows to be true will be irrevocably shattered.
My Thoughts
There’s so much going on in this series so far that you really don’t know what to expect. I feel there are so many questions that it’s likely that we eon’t get a full resolution for all of the characters but i think that at least we know that Rhine is dead set on finding her brother and getting him to stop what he’s doing. Will she get there in time though?
Throughout this final installment to the series, there are a few plot lines to follow. First is the one where Rhine knows what Rowan’s doing and needs to get to him to understand why he is doing it, what their parents were trying to accomplish and hopefully have a better last few years since the hope for a cure is lost. Of course though, the fact that she’s under Vaugh’s watch again, likely she’ll never get free of him, we know that it’s going to be a roller coaster. Add in Linden, Cecily and their baby, and well things are about to get exciting.
Linden surprises us all by becoming more helpful than we ever imagined. He’s taken on quite a burden in this book since he’s got his family to protect however you can see that there are true emotions still there for Rhine as much as he wishes there weren’t. On top of that, he’s being told all of these things about his father that go against everything that he has been taught to believe, so it’s going to be a tough coming of age bit of him in this finale in the hopes that maybe he will do the right thing .
There are a few interesting things that happen in this book. we see that a link is now shown between Rose, Madame and Linden/Vaughn. We discover this while they are trying to escape to Charleston to find Rowan, and instead find themselves back at the carnival where all hell broke loose last book. Here though, things are different since we learn that Madame and vaughn have a history that goes way way back, and Rose was Madame’s daughter – so it’s all a circle. Vaughn clearly has been working to make a name for himself for so long that everything is intertwined. If that weren’t enough, once they get away from the Carnival (they being Rhine and someone from the carnival), they find Rowan only to learn that Vaughn has his claws in him already too.
the turn that the story takes from there is a complete 180 from what we were led to believe. There’s so much that as a reader i assumed was going to be proven incorrect, but the fact that our author takes us on a journey to dispell all that we were under the impression of with certain characters makes it that much more dynamic. Where we end is not at all where i thought, we see more death than necessary and lose some of our favorite characters. I don’t know if we get a happy ending here – we get an ending, but i think that it was not where i saw the story going throughout. Sometimes that’s a good thing – reminds me of the ending of Divergent’s trilogy actually where it’s not happy – it’s just an end. On that note, have a great first day of november!