A Book Review - The Fever by Diane Hoh (Point Horror)

It's funny, I remember this being my favourite book when I was 8 or 9. I even chose it to go in our school's time capsule as an example of 90s teenage literature. Fast forward 20 years, and I found it a real slog to get through.

Main plot points: Duffy is sick with an unspecified illness that gives her a terrible fever, so with American healthcare being what it is, she's being kept in hospital. (I'm a little jealous. Here in England the doctor gives you Paracetamol and antibiotics and tells you to take fluids and bed rest. The only time I was sent to hospital was when I was, quite literally, dying. But I digress.) Anyway, Duffy doesn't want to be in hospital. She can't sleep at night because of weird noises coming from the (empty) bed beside her, and she thinks that the hospital is making her sicker. Then someone tries to kill her a bunch of times, with various clumsy tricks, and she finds out that she's getting dosed with the wrong pills, but she doesn't have a clue which of the hospital workers - who all seem to be friends of hers - is trying to knock her off.

Having been pre-med myself until I got really sick, I kind of like horror stories set in hospitals. I've never understood why so many people find hospitals creepy - I've spent enough time in them, both as a volunteer and a patient, that they feel like a second home to me - but I enjoy the second-hand creep factor that comes through books like this, not to mention the multitude of potential murder weapons. So the setting works for me. The prose is a little clumsy, but that alone wouldn't put me off. My main bug-a-boo with the book is Duffy, our heroine. She's - well, she's just not a very nice person. She's very sick, so you have to cut her a bit of slack, but there's a line beyond which you cease being a crabby sick person and become a bitch - and she passed that line early on in the book. She's rude and stuck-up to the (slightly arrogant but kind and friendly) orderly who has a crush on her. She throws tantrums because the food isn't to her liking. She whinges about how awful she feels and then ignores medical advice. I'm trying to remember if I was ever such an awful patient, during any of my many illnesses. Nope. I don't think so. Maybe. Regardless, it still makes for tough reading.

The book culminates with a scene where we find out the who, what and why of everything that's been going on, and where Duffy, fever-ridden and emaciated as she is, manages to fight off the killer and shut them in a cupboard in the morgue. Okay, I can get behind that. I think that was the first time I really liked Duffy, when she was kicking ass. The big secrets, however, are pretty sad, and the book ends on a depressing note.

Verdict: Bleak and depressing, and hard to empathise with.