Wither Review

Title: Wither (The Chemical Garden 1)
Author: Lauren DeStefano

In DeStefano's world, all of the countries except for the USA have been destroyed and now girls die at age 20 and boys die at age 25 all thanks to genetic engineering and science. This means that young girls are getting married in their teens and some are even kidnapped and forced into marriage. Usually, the young guy ends up marrying more than one girl too which leads to some potentially interesting sister wives drama and friendship.

This is exactly what happened to our main character, Rhine. She gets kidnapped and finds herself in a marriage along with two other young girls where she is expected to produce children until the whole dying at 20/25 thing is fixed. Rhine does not like it in her new home though.

I really enjoyed reading Wither. I love the concept and the relationship that comes from being forced into not only an unwanted marriage but a plural marriage. However, even though I was looking forward to seeing the sister wives dynamic play out among the family, I found it to be a little bit boring in this book. Of course, that was not the main focus of the book but it would have been nice to see more of the girls' relationships with each other and have them help each other out more than just the typical two boys-one girl love triangle.

I also really liked the whole concept for the dystopian world but some things did not make too much sense. North America being the only surviving country while all the other countries in the world are underwater really made no sense to me. There were some other little things that made this world less than believable. I really would have loved to see this dystopian world fleshed out more.

The writing was very beautiful to read though. For that reason alone (also, I do overall like the story), I will pick up the second book. I also enjoyed Rhine's character. I want to see her develop more in the next books though. I did not care for either of the guy characters and potential love interests. Especially Linden the sexy, rich husband.

Rating: 4 out of 5 Chocolate Bars