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 have had this book on my 2BR list on good reads for quite some time, I just happened to be in the book store (I know shocking right) and it was on the $5 table at Cole’s so I scooped it up. I’m not a huge fan of dystopian society so I am always a little skeptical going in. While I liked the story it was a little unsettling in a few different ways. While the main character Rhine has vowed to escape, she flip flops between loathing her husband Linden and feeling sorry for him so I can never really understand why she never tells him the truth about how she and her sister wives came to be with him. I get the whole self preservation thing but still can’t full understand her train of thought on that one. I myself found myself flopping back and forth between like and hate for Linden as well, he is content with status quo and never thinks to ask more of what is really going on in his surroundings or is there really more to him than meets the eye? I am intrigued with what’s going on in the basement in House Master Vaughn’s (Dr Creepy) laboratory with all the corpses. I do hope we get to know more about that as the series progresses. He is too creepy to just let go of. I definitely want to know what happens to Rhine next. So I will pick up the next in the series Fever due out in February 2012.
Over all I gave this book a 3.5 out of 5 star rating
You can buy a copy of Wither by Lauren DeStefano at your favorite book store online or in store.