#320 ~ Wither

Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Published by: Simon & Schuster

Published on: March 22, 2011

Page Count: 368

Genre: Young Adult, Dystopia

My Reading Format: Beautiful ARC sent to me unexpectedly by the publisher (Thanks so much!)

Available Formats: Hardcover and eBook

My Review

From the moment I saw the cover of Wither, I was so excited that I tweeted about it. The feedback I received from Candace from Beth Fish Reads and others made it impossible not to dive in right away. I suppose my disappointment with the way The Hunger Game trilogy came to an end left me hankering for something new in YA dystopia. Lauren DeStefano’s Chemical Garden series fit the bill.

Here is the summary from the publisher:

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?

Although I’ve never read it, Wither reminded me of The Handmaid’s Tale because of the basic premise of enforced pregnancy. How could I not think of Margaret Atwood’s novel? It also brought to mind the Holocaust with the mixed horrors of rounding up kidnapped girls in train cars only to pick a few and discard the rest. Yet, because she survived the culling, Rhine was supposed to feel blessed by her situation. That the posh accommodations Rhine and her future sister wives, Jenna and Cecily, aren’t enough to erase the memory of what happened to her and how she was separated from her beloved brother is completely understandable. She grew up with her brother and lived a life of relative freedom before she was kidnapped. In that house, she was trapped for the rest of her short life. The whole thing made her justifiably paranoid of everyone and everything.

Linden was an interesting character. Like Rhine, I wanted to hate him, but I couldn’t. Had he been the type of “husband” I’d feared he would be, I don’t think I could have read the book. Still, he was part of this awful arrangement and I couldn’t fully trust him. If his father had been more campy, he would have been a man I’d love to hate. Instead, I simply despised him and wished that horrible things would happen to him. Given that this is the first in a series, I knew that he was most likely going to live to see another book. Just thinking about him gives me the heebie jeebies.

Although this book is targeted to a young adult audience, I think it appeals to a much wider audience. There was nothing childish or immature about it at all. Lauren DeStafano clearly trusts that her audience is capable of handling and understanding complicated plots and horrifying situations. She is like Suzanne Collins in that way. Teenagers don’t need to be force fed moral stories or kept from harsh realities.  It is actually a disservice when one tries to be an indestructible shelter. Rarely is life as cut and dried as what you’ll find in a moral story. Besides, books are a safe place to think through the less than beautiful realities of life. Wither is a great example of YA living up to its full potential.

I enjoyed Wither and the paranoia it set off in me as I read it. The story moved quickly and there was always one thing or another I tried to puzzle out along with Rhine. Although there is one aspect of the story that I really just couldn’t buy*, I was (mostly) able to look beyond it. Most importantly, I put this book down ready to pick up the next in the series which, of course, is not yet available. Suffice to say that I’m anxiously awaiting the release of the second book.

* I won’t discuss this one glitch in my review because it would be a major spoiler. If you’re curious, shoot me an email or contact me on Twitter.