Wither Review

Title: Wither (The Chemical Garden Trilogy Book 1)


Author: Lauren DeStefano


Publish Date: 3/22/2011


My Rating: ★★★★★


Synopsis:


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?



Imagine knowing without a doubt that you were going to die at age 20 if you were a girl, and 25 if you were a boy. What would you do with your life? Rhine and her twin Rowan have lost their parents and are now fending for themselves at just 16 years old. They both have to pay close attention to everything they do because Gatherers are not far. Gatherers snatch girls up from the streets and try to sell them off for profit. Those they can't sell get shot or they take them to brothels.

Rhine gets snatched up in her very own house and the journey begins. She meets two other girls, one older, one younger, and they become sister wives.
There's so much to say about this book. I could go on and on about it, but basically the jist of it is a story about getting caught, being manipulative, and eventually getting free. There are so many twists in this book I felt out of breath myself just trying to keep up with them! This was such a great book and I was so glad the second book was already out when I began to read it because I did not want to put it down!!