Throwback Thursday: Wither by Lauren DeSteffano

 


Its Throwback Thursday time!

A recap and review of the oldest book I've read recently. This book comes from 2011, a mere 10 years ago, but I haven't read it until now. Lets take a look.

Title: Wither

By: Lauren DeSteffano

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Pages: 358

Release Date: March 22nd, 2011

Publisher: Simon Schuster Books for Young Readers

Rating: ★★★★☆

 

Summary from Goodreads:

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?

 

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Review:

This book has been floating around my book blogosphere, but somehow, I never picked it up until now. I think it was the mention of sex with a very young girl. And although she consented to it, I think the author could have made that character a bit older so it wouldn't be so shocking.

With that being said, I really enjoyed the whole premise of the book. There is a disease that kills girls at 20 and boys at 25. How the disease knows exactly how old people are, so they can kill them, that is not clear, but that is just how things work in this world.

The characters are strong and believable. I really wanted to hate the annoying youngest wife, I think her name was Celeste. She was annoying, just wanted to do her wifely duty, even thought she was kidnapped and forced to marry a man who could be her father. Putting all that aside, the story was about survival and the strength of women.

Not sure if I will read the next book in the series, but it might be fun.

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