Wither by Lauren DeStefano

I have been meaning to pick up this book on the sole fact that I LOVE THE COVER. I know besides being a fictional floozy, I am also a cover slut. I promise to start to go to meetings for this problem.


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 read it and it was a solid story. It was not my favorite dystopia and I think the reason is because I was expecting something more to happen in the story.Before I get into that I want to talk about the good things.
Rhine is a really good character - as in a really good person - a girl I would be friends with. The sister wives is a unique concept, slightly creepy, but it is a dystopia. I liked Jenna the best though.

Linden - I really thought he was going to be a messed up, control freak. Not the case and I did think he was going to have a major character flaw. It really was just a 20 year old, living under his father's watchful eye, and was trusting. I felt bad for him. He lost a lot and I am predicting only going to lose more.

I am glad that Gabriel and Rhine's relationship doesn't get all steamy. And while sex was a main contributor to this story - it's done very discreetly. 


While I liked the characters, thought the set up for the chemical problem was solid, this was not action packed for me. It is basically Rhine plotting her escape. Which leads me into my dislike for Linden's father. He's a jerk, a controlling jerk - but I wanted him to be more of a controlling jerk. I wanted him to be threatening. I missed the action. 


And while I wanted it to be more action packed - I will be picking up Fever.