Wither

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

What Goodreads said about Wither:
"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?

Together with one of Linden's servants, Gabriel, Rhine attempts to escape just before her seventeenth birthday. But in a world that continues to spiral into anarchy, is there any hope for freedom?"

Cover:
Simply beautiful! The wild hair, the dress the down turned gaze means so much in this book. Great cover art!

First Thoughts:

Okay! the concept is great! A virus kills all the youngsters at a a ripe old age of 20 or 25. Love it! This dystopian world is perfectly plotted out, it really is, but the whole story is so...awkward. It's so hard to believe that this is accepted, or maintained. The girls are sold like cattle, their masters are rich tycoons and no one seems to care that a very young girl just gets pregnant! Oh and lets not forget that polygamy is common and excepted. How far did the world have to fall for all of these things to just become "Normal"? Really the whole plot of this book eludes my imagination. I just can not picture this. Are there no women out there that will stand up for themselves? Not a single one? I'm sorry but I don't think I would just lay down and take this kind of treatment...Does love not mater in the least? 

On another note the characters were great! I really did love them!

My Dream Cast:

Rhine Ellery, Gabriel, Linden Ashby, Jenna, Cecily and Rose

 

 

Final Thoughts:

This book was... odd. I enjoyed it, but the whole concept was so demoralizing to women. No one fought for themselves, women were treated like sheep and men ruled the world. Not a place I prefer to live in. I like the story line it really did hold my attention, and the characters were amazingly created, but not my favorite book to say the least.

xoxo-