Title: Wither (Chemical Garden Trilogy, Book 1)
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Summary:
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?
**Please be aware- I kind of rant in this review. Its probably my longest review ever... Sorry. **
Review:
This book is hard to review. I have been hearing about it for a while now… but now Im just not sure whether I liked it or not.
The beginning (first chapter) was great, I was immediately interested in what the world was like and what was going to happen. But then it stopped. The story dragged and dragged forever, and I constantly kept waiting for something to happen.
I didn’t really like the way the story was told. I felt like I could never connect with Rhine. I didn’t really care about her at all. At the beginning, her fear was tangible and real, then nothing she said/felt mattered to me anymore. As far as the sister wives, I loved watching their relationship with each other grow. That was done really well. But that’s it. I really didn’t like Cecily. Jenna was ok, and had a little more depth to her. But I didn’t really like any of the sister wives.
However, I really just couldn’t stand Rhine at all. She kept saying she wanted to be free. But what point was there to being free. She was safe, and treated well, and it was terrible where she was. She even started caring about Lindin (who wasn’t really the bad guy- his father Vaughn was) and yeah- I would get not wanting to be around Vaughn, but how great is the world outside of this mansion?? Not to mention-