I admit it….I have Terrible Fever. 😉 So much so, that today’s review will not follow my usual format (yes, it has affected my thought process that much!)
What is Terrible Fever you ask? It is caused by Stacia Kane’s “Downside Ghosts” series and has a variety of symptoms (pleasing to the reader, perhaps not so much to those around the reader).
The fever causes the reader to:
- Obsess about the characters (and particularly one named “Terrible”).
- Bite their nails, clench their teeth, and sleep only a few hours a night (staying up until 3 or 4am or waking extra early just to get a few more chapters in). In some extreme cases, they do both (as I did – meaning I was getting about 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night until I was finished reading the series).
However, the symptoms don’t end there.
- The reader will sigh frequently, and groan in agony quite a few times too.
- Upon attempting to follow a normal daily routine (like work), the obsession will continue to consume the reader’s thoughts, as they re-live the scenes in their head. This causes the reader to unwittingly ignore everyone around them and have that “dreamy” look in their eyes (or that glassy look – tee hee!).
- Every “break” the reader gets, will find them scrambling for their book, And let’s be honest, the reader will attempt to create many of these “extra breaks”. You may even hear them growling or catch them rolling their eyes at anyone who succeeds in distracting them.
- You know that fake smile you’ve seen when you’ve interrupted a reader (or given, if you were the reader interrupted)? You know the one…where you hold your breath and plaster a fake smile that looks more like a grimace? The eyebrows are raised, with feigned interest in what the “interrupter” is saying. Yeah…it happens ALOT here…
- But the worst symptom, and it happens to the best of us, is when the reader suddenly breaks out in “Downside-speak”. Yes, it happened to me. And it wasn’t pretty. Husband confused…worried expression…eyebrows raised. I assured him I was not having an “episode”, but it did cause me to chuckle and contemplate how funny the brain is…
- And of course, as with ALL great and addictive series, once it is over, the reader will insist upon talking about it incessantly, even trying to incorporate little “tidbits” of the book into normal daily conversation. Yeah…it’s best to join a “Terrible Support Group” when that happens (I’ve joined “I Gots Terrible Fever” on Goodreads). Luckily I also have “Lily” – she understands my predicament. Although…she is the one who introduced me to this addiction. Hrmmm…
Ok so what’s the series about? It’s awesome, but I’m simply going to paste in this morning’s chat with my mom about the series and how she needs to read it (she’s a paranormal romance addict like us). It’s kinda “raw” – just me, in my full excitement about the series, trying to tell her about it in general, without spoiling it. It would be too easy to give spoilers away, and since it is an ongoing series, I really don’t want to do that for those who haven’t read it yet. I think I did okay…
