Wither (The Chemical Garden #1)

I loved this!

a review by Angel Fish

Wither, a somewhat unique novel set in the future of the United States, is about a girl named Rhine Ellery who lives in a world where technicalities with experimenting have led to girls mysteriously dying at the age of 20 and men at age 25. Rhine, who's sixteen, scrambles to survive in a neighborhood in Manhattan, where her twin brother and herself struggle to make ends meet by taking various factory jobs. When applying for another occupation, she is surprised to find that the people awaiting her are not business owners, but Gatherers, people employed to capture girls and sell them to House Governors so as to produce children and repopulate the world. Rhine is sent to live with a House Governor named Linden, who Rhine vows to be exacted revenge on, and while occupying the glorious mansions and its wide arrange of lush gardens, she spends her days looking for escape back to her brother. She spends her days with two other girls, who she calls her sister wives: Jenna, a girl of eighteen who is growing close to her dying date, and Cecily, a mere child at age 13. But escape is more complicated than Rhine could ever imagine. Vaughn, the cruel housemaster who punishes the people that disobey him easily, yet eager to find the antidote for the mysterious illness that has touched his children (he is a First Generation, meaning he still grows over the age of 25,) manipulates the household of this mansion so carefully that Rhine doesn't know who is to trust and who is faithful. When she meets the handsome servant Gabriel, she immediately accepts him as trustworthy. But will this harmless endeavor grow to something extremely dangerous?

Lauren DeStefano successfully creates an intricate balance of character development that blends raw human emotion with a deeper layer of personalities that are not so different from the way we are today. Her writing is pure and original, her touches of sensory detail almost poetic to the ears. Although I wouldn't call this one of my favorite books of all time, Wither came close to reaching that list. The premise is interesting and partly creative ( I kept comparing it to The Hunger Games, and I could find many similarities) but the way she pulls it off is totally different and extremely stylized and thoughtful compared to to other dystopian science fiction reads. The end left me at a cliffhanger but satisfied me for the time being. I will be waiting eagerly for the Chemical Garden Trilogy's next book!

Reader reviewed by EGZ

Wither
is one of the most unique futuristic books I have read in a long time.
The author does a wonderful job showing the emotional ups and downs that
Rhine has to endure while she desperately tries to find a way out of
the mansion that is holding her captive. 

Even
without much information about the character at the beginning of the
book I felt like you learned her entire past in the book, including her
family, her brother Rowen and how she came to be taken as a wife. 

The
description in this book is amazing, I could literally see the house
she was living in, from the bedrooms the wives occupied, to the library
where they spent much of their time.

Reader reviewed by Krystal Larson

I loved the cover of this book; ironically, the cover is indicative of the books contents. The girl on the cover is the main character, Rhine, who Linden enslaved to be his bride.
Rhine is a survivor, her parents died fairly long ago leaving only her twin brother to support her. I admired Rhine's perseverance in escaping Linden and her determination to help her friends aka sister wives. I was surprised by how well I knew Rhine at the end of the novel, I also enjoyed the author's other two sister wives. With distinct personalities, one is somber and accepting of her fate while the other is childlike and demanding. Rhine balances these two out with her will to live and her maturity in formulating her plan. The reader also meets Linden, Rhine's oblivious husband, and Gabriel, Rhine's helpful love interest. These characters are all well-developed and made to elicit certain emotions in the reader.

The story begins with Rhine realizing she had been taken to become a bride. In this dystopian society, due to scientific attempts to perfect the human race women die around their twentieth birthdays and men die on their twenty-fifth birthdays. The result of these lives cut short: women are taken off the streets at random to become the brides of wealthy men to produce children. Rhine is realistic about her situation after a mourning period, she adjusts to the finery of her new home and slowly begins to befriend her sister wives. In the first few chapters of the book, Rhine begins to hatch an escape plan. It is in the house that Rhine meets Gabriel, during one of her escapes from the confines of the wives' floor. She also befriends Rose, Linden's first love and wife, who dies shortly after. The book continues with exciting scenes and constant action.

The author keeps the readers attention throughout the novel, I was able to finish the book in a day. The words and actions flow, the events are exciting, and characters are well-known to the reader. I would recommend this book to young adults (female).

Reader reviewed by Ruthie