Wither (The Chemical Garden #1)

Yes, it made me cry!

I completely understand what all the raving was about now. This book was A-mazing. Seriously. I'm hoping I don't gush all over this review with its amazingness.

To start, the concept was much different than any other dystopian I've read. Most are simply a post-apocalyptic world or a society with major flaws. I found it a bit difficult to imagine a world where most things still appear normal in the sense of how we see the world now knowing it was dystopian. It was also hard to imagine a world where "men" can be 15. I mean, the people who were "old" and close to death were only a year older than myself. It's crazy.

The writing in Wither was absolutely fantastic. It was beautiful and yet morose. The descriptions of everything from snow to fancy dresses were so fantastic, I wanted to be there myself despite the hopelessness of the world. And the characters DeStefano creates are just as fantastic as the writing itself. I found myself feeling sympathy for Linden though I knew I should hate him as Rhine did. Speaking of Rhine. I loved her. She was so genuine and yet still a strong lead. Instead of being all pushy and in-your-face about her strength and determination, though, she kept it underneath the surface making me respect her all the more.

I was so torn between how I wanted it to end. I both wanted Rhine to escape and to stay. In the end, I was happy with the ending but it sadly didn't leave me with that "I need more now!" feeling. If the cover didn't say Trilogy right on it, I could have easily assumed this was a standalone. Don't mistake that minor whining on my part to be a true complaint, though. I will be awaiting the next in the series as you most certainly will when you read it.

Final thoughts: Any fan of dystopia will definitely want to get their hands on this. If you're wary of dystopian or think you don't like it, give this one a try. It's a different vibe than the "despair, despair, despair" of others. Go to the bookstore, library, borrow from a friend: whatever you need to do, go get this book immediately.

I am surprised by how much I actually liked this! I had read so many different reviews about it, that I just had a negative outlook on it.
I need to stop doing that, really, reading reviews before I read the book!

But I have grown to love dystopian novels. This one in particular is something that I would definitely not like being thrown into. The world is a scary one with no hope.
The story in itself is something I had never read about before, and the further I got into the book, the more I was growing attached to the three sister wives. Also, I feel sorry for Linden!

I’m ready for the next one!

ISBN: 9781442409057
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 358

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?

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Wither by Lauren DeStefano! I really liked the concept behind this dystopian tale, where rather than the characters benefitting from the genetic experiment, they end up having to alter their society to cope with their shorter lifespans! I also enjoyed how Wither was actually written, it flowed well! My favourite characters were Gabriel and Rhine. Both of them were confined to Linden’s mansion, although for different purposes. Rhine’s purpose was to be a replacement for Linden’s first wife, whilst Gabriel’s role was to be a servant. I love the scientific cover of Wither! The “circle arrows” on the cover are not only quite modern and trendy, they also link up the different elements within the cover to each other (and the story within!).

Available at Amazon.co.uk.

*SPOILER ALERT*
I was dying to read this book since a couple of months, as I've read lots of good things about it so, when I found it used in a bookshop, I had no doubt about buying it.

In the future, life will last only 20 years for women and 25 for men; this will happen because of the evolution of science and medicine, who have found a cure against all the diseases.No one could have thought that their children would have lived only for 20-25 years instead. So, the richest exponents of the society,they always choose among groups of girls, kidnapped by hunters, those who will become their wifes. Rhine has been stolen to his twin brother for this reason: become the wife on the governor Linden; Will she accept her destiny or will she rebel against her captors?

Isn't the blurb magnificent? When I've read it I was so captured by the synopsis that I started the book as soon as I bought it. For being sincere, the beginning disappointed me a little. I mean, I expected there was more action and twists in the book but, conversely, the story proceeded very slowly. Fortunately at the end I finally found myself completely concentrated on the story that I couldn't put the book down.
What I found very positive in the book was:
-First of all the incredible ability to write of Lauren DeStefano; I loved how she had developped the whole book, because even if slowly, it was very well written. What I enjoyed particulary about her writing style was the harshness with which she described the scenes.
-The characters' description, I loved them all of them! It was amazing because they all have peculiar personalities and even if they are completely different in some aspects they are forced to live together.
*Rhine, she was the protagonist and I appreciated that the author had always expressed her feelings and emotions. She was a strong girl but sometimes she seemed so fragile; the desperate condition in which she is located, leads Rhine to hate everything around her but at the same time sometimes she let herself free from this hatred, in needing of a family as a reference and a bit of affection.
*Jenna, was certainly one of my favourite character! She was also a strong woman but she was resigned to her destiny, as all of her sisters were killed by the hunters; by the way, she was always there for Rhine and she helped her finding a way to escape from that reality, even if that cost her her life. I loved her sensuality and the way she used that quality of her to deceive people around her. Yes, her death was a shock to me! :')
*Cecily, I really have twisted feeling about her, just as Rhine had. She was a fourteen girl who was raised in a orphanage, where everyone taught her that being the wife of a rich men was everything she could ask from life. She immediately got pregnant and enjoyed the circumstances in which she was, as she will never understand the horror that is around her. She was so tender sometimes because you could clearly understand that she needed someone desperately, but at the end of the book I hated her behaviour!
* Linden, maybe this could sound like completely wrong, but I would love to see him and Rhine together!! Maybe this is because I was not particulary captured by Gabriel's character; Linden is the victim of her father and she basically lives in a world of lies and falsehoods. He would never know what his father is doing in the basement and he will never enjoy freedom, a life away from his father.
I think that Linden and Rhine in other circumstances would have been perfect together!
What I would have loved to see was a more detailed description of Gabrile, who was certainly a special guy but actually, there is not much of him in Wither. Conversely I still feel so attracted by Linden and I love his moments with Rhine.
I just can't imagine how he will go ahead without Rhine?!

The book's finale didn't make me think about a sequel, because that seems like the perfect "happily ever after". By the way I can't wait to read "Fever", 'cause I'm so curious about how Lauren DeStefano will continue this promising trilogy.

I LOVE this story! Set in a believable future, the main character is captured and forced into a polygamous marriage to help further the next generation. With life spans being so short, Rhine is determined to not spend her final years locked up as some mans plaything.

I loved this!

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).