Book Review: Wither by Lauren Destefano

Synopsis 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?

My Thoughts:

Meh. I tried hard to like this book, I did. 

No matter how bored I was, no matter how many times I rolled my eyes, I pushed through. 

I had a very hard time connecting to ANY of the characters and being invested in the story. 

I felt like the MC was dull and dumb and could NOT decide what she wanted. 

The “romance” if you could call it that was lacking any type of feeling and the person she ended up with seemed to be by default. I saw/felt NOTHING between them. 

The futuristic world was so intriguing, and it’s what kept me from chucking the book at a pigeon. I kept reading and reading hoping I’d find out more about the world but I didn’t. Usually a lack of world building isn’t too big a deal to me as long as I am invested in something else (characters, romance, plot, etc.), But I WASN’T. 

Nothing interesting happened in this story whatsoever. 99% of it took place in one place, which isn't always a problem, but the NOTHING HAPPENING surely was. Many times throughout the novel I was just wishing an alien would break through a window and killed everybody...at least that would have surprised me! 

I will say that the writing was the novels saving grace. Saving grace, of course meaning not a one star rating and one happy, living pigeon! It was very eloquent and beautifully dark, paralleled to the disparity of Rhine’s situation and the whole premise of Wither. 

I would like to pick up the rest of the books in the series and give it another shot, but I will be either going to my library, or Googling it! 2.5 star rating

2.5 "Withers"

Happy Reading! :)