LAUREN DESTEFANO; Wither

Author: Lauren Destefano
Novel: Wither (The Chemical Garden Trilogy book 1)
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Released: 2011

What if you knew exactly when you would die? 
Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb — males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out. 

When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape — to find her twin brother and go home.

But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant Rhine is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limited time she has left.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I pre-ordered this book and read it as soon as it arrived on my doorstep. It was just a pity that uni work caught up with me and I am only just posting my review now.

The cover is beautiful, and seriously, who doesn't judge a book by its cover? That is probably one of the reasons why I wanted to read it this one so much. And just like the cover, the story beautiful too. The dystopian genre is certainly kicking off at the moment, and this book adds its own piece of wonderfulness. It really gets you thinking about the future—where the human race will be in 100... 200 years time—and about how lucky we are at the present.

This book does contains violence—I started reading the first chapter to my mother, not a good idea—and sexual references. I would recommend it to the older half of the YA readers, just because it is quite a confronting story with teen pregnancy, polygny, killing and creepy as experiments.

That been said, I certainly wouldn't want to be Rhine. She goes through some really hard experiences. How she copes and deals with these problems is very inspiring. She never gives up hope but nor does she try to delude herself into thinking her circumstances are better than they really are. And I think that, more than anything, is what makes this book such a great read.


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