Review: Wither by Lauren DeStefano.

Posted March 29, 2011 by Rowena in Reviews | 2 Comments

Main Character: Rhine
Love Interest: Gabriel (highlight to find out)
Series: The Chemical Garden Trilogy, Book 1
Author: Website|Facebook|Twitter|Goodreads

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?

I’ve wanted to read this book for forever. I got it from the Galley Grab and finally got around to reading it toward the release of the book and I was quite impressed with DeStefano’s writing style. She wove this story so well that it wrapped itself around me and held on tight until I was finished. I didn’t want this story to end on one hand but on the other hand, I couldn’t read the pages fast enough.

Dystopian books are everywhere right now and the dystopian world that Lauren DeStefano created for this batch of characters was so vivid that it was easy for me to picture every single thing that happened in this book, from the mansion to the other characters to the holograms, it was all so wonderfully described that it was so easy for me to fall into this story. This story follows Rhine’s journey from being kidnapped away from her brother to become the sister wife to Linden Ashby.

Linden Ashby’s father is one of those great big important doctors who is trying to create an antidote that would save everyone. In this book, men and women know when they’re going to die. Years ago after the world war that demolished countries and continents, scientists went to work to try to create the perfect human beings. Instead of creating the perfect human being, they created an entire generation of children whose life span caps off at 20 for girls and 25 for boys. You can tell that Linden’s father is obsessed with saving his last surviving son. He’s got a basement lab of the mansion that they all live in, where he works and the creep factor on this guy is sky high. But I loved getting to know this creepy old guy through Rhine’s eyes. DeStefano did a fantastic job of writing her characters because they were all so …real.

I felt for the whole lot of them from Rhine to Gabriel and to the other sister wives, Jenna in particular. I loved getting to know each and every single one of them. I didn’t like all of them but I still loved reading about them. There were things in this story that I just couldn’t get into, like Cecily having Linden’s child. It was hard getting through that with the knowledge that Linden would handle his business with someone so young like that but even though I wasn’t a big fan of that, I was still able to enjoy the story as a whole. Like Rhine, while I was reading this book, I felt closer to Jenna and I grieved with Jenna. I grieved for Jenna and I’m telling you now, I want to know what the heck is going on in that damn basement.

My favorite part of this story was Rhine and Gabriel. These two were outstanding characters that you couldn’t help but fall in love with. Rhine’s dogged determination to escape the mansion and find her brother again was admirable and I loved that she wouldn’t let anyone make her forget about her brother. I must say that I’m mighty interested in meeting this brother so I’m hoping that we’ll be able to meet him in future books. Gabriel was a wonderful addition to an already fantastic cast of characters. You just couldn’t help but fall for this guy, he was great! I loved that Rhine had someone she could call her friend in that place and it helped keep her on track with her mission to get back home to Manhattan.

It was hard for me to like Linden. He was such a weak character, weak in the sense that he let his father manipulate him into so much and just when I thought I would like him, he would do something (bring up Rose, kiss the other wives especially Cecily) and then my guard would immediately go right back up and that’s another thing that made this story so wonderful, the relationships between Linden and his wives. I’m not one to be all about the polygamy thing. I don’t watch Big Love, I don’t care to start watching Sister Wives but reading about a polygamist relationship was really interesting in this book. It raised a lot of questions for me and while that kind of relationship is not for me, it was good to read about it in this book.

Lots of things pop off in this book and it sets up future books perfectly, IMO. Overall, this story was a fantastic read. DeStefano kept me engrossed in this story and I was sad to see it end. I would definitely recommend this book to fans of the dystopian genre and also to fans that are looking for something different to read because this book did a great job of entertaining the socks right off of me.

For all my Moms out there, I’d give this book a rating of:

This book is too mature for kids under thirteen years of age. There’s a polygamist marriage going on, underage pregnancy and a lot of dark things that I don’t think is appropriate for a younger audience.