Sever by Lauren Destefano

This book starts right were the other one ended, Rhine in the hospital and just saw a news broadcast with her brother in Rhode Island. Now that Rhine has an idea of where her brother is, she is rearing to go on another adventure to find him. But, she is in no shape to go trekking up the east coast in search for her brother. So, Linden takes her up to his Uncle Reed house for her to recover away from his father while she makes up a plan to save her brother.

Lauren DeStefano has a way with words, making them so real, raw, harsh, brutal and sharp edged. The entire story is raw and painful that at points it is hard to read because of all the pain brought upon the characters. You grieve for the characters, even the bad guy Vaughn. The whole story is dark and haunting but in the end it does brighten up in the last couple of paragraphs.

I love series that have subtle pieces at the beginning of the series and they slowly come together as the series progress and pieces that didn't make sense in the first book or the second book click together nicely in the final book. ***Might be a spoiler**** But little things like why Madame looked so familiar to Rhine, or how what the seer told Rhine in book two starts to come together in the third book. The puzzle piece fit together nicely and I like how it all comes together in the end.

The characters get much more fleshed out in this book. You really get to see Rhine grow, Cecily grow and even Linden grow. There is a new character Reed that is great and you learn a lot about him as well. You learn more about the older characters like Vaughn and other characters along the way. They are no longer cardboard cutouts but they now feel real life and all the tragedy that comes to them is hard to read, because you are rooting for these characters, they are now your friends and you don't won't what happens, happen to them.

I believe this one was probably the best book of the series. The middle one dragged but if you were able to get through it you are rewarded with this one that has so much emotion and hardship.