Publisher: Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing (March 22, 2011)ARC: 356 Pages
Series: Chemical Garden #1
Genre: YA dystopian
ARC from Publisher*
From Goodreads. 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 limted time she has left.
Review
WITHER, by Lauren DeStefano, is a thrilling, chilling, and romantic story of fighting for what you believe in when your life-clock is slowing ticking away. DeStefano took science to the extreme of decimating the human race to a very short life-span. The consequences of technology and playing with nature are explored in this book, along with a girl's fight to survive and find her way home.
As a scientist by trade, I was definitely intrigued to read this book. The 'perfect generation' was created using science to the extreme, but the consequences of this affected each generation after. When this story begins, women's life spans only go to age twenty and men to twenty-five. To preserve the human race, women are stolen and sold to the highest bidder.
The idea of polygamy and 'sister wives' was interesting to read. Although Rhine was taken away from her twin brother, I felt that her situation could have been worse. Her relationship with her sister wives, Cecily and Jenna added an interesting dynamic to the book. I enjoyed the friendship between Jenna and Rhine. They both were similar minded and plotted together to plan Rhine's escape. Linden and Rhine's marriage was definitely different from the other girls and I was pleased to see that Rhine never faltered in remembering what she needed to do to escape. And my favorite was the connection between Rhine and Gabriel. They were both thrown into their roles at the mansion but had the smarts and willingness to do something to change it.
Although Linden's father was, in my mind, an evil scientist I was anxious for him to discover a cure for the virus that kills humans at their final age. His methods were barbaric and bone-chilling but hard times call for desperate measures.
Overall, this book was really fantastic. DeStefano definitely has a talent for great writing and creating characters and plot that really stick in your mind long after the last page is read.
Read the First Chapter of WITHER
*FTC Disclosure: I received this ARC from the publisher. I do not receive payment of any kind in exchange for a review. I do not receive monetary compensation from any book links in my review.
0 comment:
Post a Comment