Wither

Today’s post is on Wither by Lauren DeStefano. It is the first book in her Chemical Garden trilogy. The cover has a young woman not looking at the camera on it. It is 358 pages long and is published by Simon & Schuster. The intended reader is someone who likes YA fiction and dystopian stories. There is mild foul language, discussion of sex and sexuality, and mild violence in this novel.  The story is told from first person close of the main character, Rhine. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. She can thank modern science for this genetic time bomb. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years. Geneticists are seeking a miracle antidote to restore the human race, desperate orphans crowd the population, crime and poverty have skyrocketed, and young girls are being kidnapped and sold as polygamous brides to bear more children.

When Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Her husband, Linden, is hopelessly in love with her, and Rhine can't bring herself to hate him as much as she'd like to. He opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought existed, and it almost makes it possible to ignore the clock ticking away her short life. But Rhine quickly learns that not everything in her new husband's strange world is what it seems. Her father-in-law, an eccentric doctor bent on finding the antidote, is hoarding corpses in the basement. Her fellow sister wives are to be trusted one day and feared the next, and Rhine is desperate to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. Will Rhine be able to escape--before her time runs out?

Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?

Review- This is a very dark young adult story. Rhine only has twenty years to live before something will destroy her body from the inside out. Humanity thought that they had beaten death but that is not the case. The story starts with Rhine being kidnapped to be a bride of a young man, who does not know that is what happened to her. He thinks that she chose to be his bride. Rhine just wants to get back to her twin brother. Add in her ‘husband’s creepy father and you have a tense story. The reader is pulled through this volume by wanting to see how Rhine is going to get out of the house. I did enjoy this novel, it is not the best version of this story that I have read but I am curious about where the plot is going next. 

I give this novel a Three out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I bought this novel with my own money.