Fever: The Chemical Garden Trilogy, Book 2

Rhine and Gabriel are held captive in a brothel, beaten up, and drugged repeatedly, then made to perform (not described). Rhine is also subjected to what's probably months of experiments while drugged; the drugged haze is described in detail along with hallucinations of the dead talking to her. The only procedure described is needles slowly inserted into her eyes. Talk of deformed children having been experimented on and cadavers of known characters being dissected. A child's arm is broken as she's beaten up. Rhine has flashbacks to vans gathering girls in the streets and the girls getting shot. She sees a girl with a bullet in her head lying in the street, and a few characters are shot in the brothel. Rhine is sexually assaulted; she's kissed and groped before she gets away. All new generations die young of a disease -- girls at 20, boys at 25.

The first third of the book takes place in a brothel. Customers watch Rhine and Gabriel "perform" in a cage, though only the first kiss is described. It's supposed that they have sex, though, because Madame gives Rhine birth control pills. Every night Rhine hears lots of giggling followed by signs that girls are off in tents with customers, grunting and such. A mention that men can, for a cheaper price, get girls who are in the tent already dying from the disease. Since birth control pills are hard to come by, girls have lots of babies in the brothel, babies who are raised around its activities. Some kisses later between Rhine and Gabriel, and a minor character is always in a backyard shed having trysts with his many admirers.

Language includes "whore," "bastard," and a few instances of "hell."

Madame smokes, as does another minor character, and she's always on a form of opium called angel's blood. Rhine and Gabriel are drugged in the brothel with angel's blood, and it gives Gabriel a long, painful withdrawal, complete with morbid hallucinations. A man is drunk when he tries to force himself on Rhine.

Parents need to know that even if they were fine letting their teen read Wither, the first book in this dystopian trilogy, they might think twice about the sexual content in Fever. The first third of the book takes place in a brothel, where the main character, Rhine, is forced to "perform" with her fellow runaway, Gabriel, in a cage. Only kissing is described, but the madam gives Rhine birth control pills before her first show. Rhine and Gabriel are kept in a drugged haze the whole time, and Gabriel suffers a terrible withdrawal after their escape. Rhine's drama doesn't end there, though. She's also subjected to a number of horrible medical experiments against her will, the whole time hallucinating about the dead and very ill. There's not a happy moment in this book, even as the idea of freedom at all costs comes up, and good characters work hard to look out for one another in dismal circumstances. They're still living in a semi-lawless world where all new generations die by age 25.