Release Date: March 22, 2011
Grade: B+
Recommended for fans of YA series, fans of The Handmaid's Tale
Thanks to the good folks at Simon & Schuster and Atria Books for my ARC. No book before this was devoured by my book club and raved about as passionately as this debut effort from Lauren DeStefano.
Wither is the first installment in a YA dystopian trilogy set a hundred years or so in the future. The book starts off with a bang throwing the reader right into the action while filling in pertinent background info as the pages turn. We learn that there is a generation of super humans who are genetically perfect and cured of all tragic diseases. This generation having their genes modified so much have gone on to produce children with seriously diminished lifespans due to a virus that they are not immune to. The virus that affects the modern generation that causes girls to die at 20 years old and boys at 25. This is causing young girls to be kidnapped by a group of people called Gatherers whose sole mission is to round up young girls to sell as teen brides to produce offspring to be used as test subjects to find a cure for the virus. Rhine Ellery is kidnapped by these Gatherers and taken from Manhattan to somewhere in Florida where she is sold to a high society family as a bride. Rhine shares a husband with three other young girls and is doted upon by her personal servant, one who runs luxurious baths and sews exquisite clothing for any occasion. Rhine is resistant to this new lifestyle and dreams of escaping to be reunited with her twin brother. We get to see the dynamics of sisterhood amongst the three wives throughout their unique relationships with their shared husband. About a year goes by in this book where Rhine together with a servant named Gabriel plans her escape to freedom with the help of the eldest sister wife.
My first impression of the book was that it had better live up to its cover which has a young girl dressed in a fancy getup wearing what I know to be a shade of Urban Decay eyeshadow and a forlorn expression on her face. My second thought was that this was going to be another YA book series that would become my latest reading addiction. While I was not a fan of the way the book started by throwing the reader into the thick of the action, things quickly picked up within 50 pages. From there it was hard to put the book down as I had an idea of what I thought would happen and wanted to find out if I was right. In the beginning I thought that this book would introduce us to Rhine and she'd get pregnant and book 2 would be about the baby while book 3 would be about her death. Suffice it to say that my assumption was totally wrong. While this book may have been inspired by Margaret Atwood's dystopia The Handmaid's Tale, there are similarities but Wither is its own story geared towards the teen market. That being said I think this series will definitely appeal to adults particularly Atwood fans. What surprised me most was the fact that this is a book written by a debut author who is only 26! The storyline is addicting and there is just enough darkness and mystery to keep you turning page after page wondering where it would go next. Now I'm waiting with bated breath for the second and third installments of this trilogy. My prediction is that this series is going to be huge, like Twilight huge, only a million times better written. So if you're a fan of sci-fi, dystopias, YA or Margaret Atwood, give this book a try and I'm sure you'll be a fan.
Read an excerpt here.
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