Something is happening to teen girls, and it's very, very bad. 
 First it's Deenie's best friend, Lise, who suffers some sort of seizure in the middle of class -- and whose greatest worry is whether everyone saw. (They did). Next, Deenie's almost-best-friend Gabby has a spell of some sort in the midst of an orchestra performance. And then more, and more, and more. Is it an epidemic? Is it mass hysteria? 
 In The Fever, there are many questions, but not so many answers. 
 Reminiscent both of The Crucible and Mean Girls, The Fever shows the damage done to girls as they enter and transition through the perilous teen years. For Deenie and her friends, the change from unformed, bright innocents to girls who attract boys' eyes and know it is fraught with physical and emotional dangers. 
 They revel in the changes in their own bodies, but are undermined by the food provided by family. They delight in their power, but can be brought low by the looks or oversights of boys. They hunger for attention, but don't know what to do with it once they get it. 
 And as we see through the eyes of Deenie's brother Eli, the girls become a mass of indistinguishable sexualized beings. Eli is a protective big brother, cherishing his younger sister and defending even her friends from predatory eyes -- and yet Eli is a total hound toward every other girl in school, having no qualms about inviting adoring girls (he's a big hottie) over for late-night booty calls and then sending them on their way. The girls are faceless and interchangeable to Eli and his friends: They're sexy, they're available, and they're easily forgotten. 
 The girls in The Fever are all damaged, one way or the other. Of the characters we meet, all have deficiencies in their home lives -- bitterly divorced parents, no parents, irresponsible guardians, even a mother who survived a vicious assault by the father and bears horrific scars as a constant reminder. The environment, too, is literally toxic -- the lake is an unnatural emerald green and was declared unsafe for swimming years earlier. The school itself is later found to have all sorts of deadly and dangerous substances in its walls and its grounds. 
 So what's making the girls sick? Perhaps everything. Hysterical parents initially blame the mysterious outbreak on the HPV vaccine that was administered to all girls the previous year -- but when that proves to be a red herring, other scapegoats must be found. Suspicious eyes turn to Deenie, one of the few who isn't sick. Does that mean she's a carrier? Is she the local version of Typhoid Mary? 
 Deenie is devastated, not just by her friends' illnesses, but by the shock of discovering the secrets lurking behind the scenes in the life she thought she knew. 
 I found The Fever to be a compelling read, but I couldn't quite decide how I really felt about it. In parts, it felt like a mystery to be solved, sifting through clues, unraveling stories that do and don't make sense. On the other hand, it's very much an atmospheric piece. There's a sense of doom and misery throughout the book. None of these girls are happy, and they all suffer, one way or another. It's all quite dismal, and at times, it's practically suffocating. 
 And yet, I couldn't look away. Perhaps it's the book version of a car crash on the highway. You know bad things are happening, and yet you stretch to get a glimpse just the same. Towards the end, as the lies and secrets unravel, the story becomes more straightforward and I found myself enjoying it more. The narrative in most of the book weaves between different points of view, but eventually, plot seems to matter more, and I could not wait to get answers. 
 So yes, by the end, there is a solution of sorts -- but not everything is easily explained. The girls of the town may be recovering, but they'll never recapture the innocence of assuming oneself to be safe. As a study of what it means to be a teen girl in America, The Fever is very frightening indeed. 
 Also posted at Bookshelf Fantasies. Review copy via NetGalley.