Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Wither (Chemical Garden trilogy, #1)

By Lauren DeStefano

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2011

358 pages, hardcover

Date Finished: 27/5/2011

Genres: Young Adult, Coming of Age, Fantasy, Romance, Futuristic

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.
~from goodreads.com~

~First Line: "I wait."
~Last Line: "This time, I don't know where the light will guide us."

Review: Lauren DeStefano's debut novel was ahmazing! It kept me coming back for more; I couldn't put it down long enough to do anything other than text, which, for me, is saying something!

The main character, Rhine is introduced to us in the back of a van. She's been kidnapped, and in the end is one of the lucky ones. While every girl is nearing their time for death, Rhine and two others are lucky enough to prolong it.

Everything that happened in Wither held my attention and kept me reading for hours at a time. One of my favorite characters in this book was Jenna. She was always so secretive about certain things, but she sincerely cared about her sister wives and what happened to them. Life isn't exactly a fairy tale for Jenna close to the end of the book, but c'est la vie, I guess.

This book . . . wow. There really aren't words. I just wish that I could babble on and on about everything that took place in it. But that would sort of ruin the book for others, so I'll refrain myself :). I'm definitely anxious for the release of Fever next year!