Book Review: WITHER

Title: WITHER
Author: Lauren DeStefano
Release Date: 03/22/2011
My Rating: 4/5-- I mostly enjoyed it.
Plot in One Word: Dystopian
Good if...you want something unique and dystopian

At age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years to live. Thanks to a botched effort to create a perfect race, all females live to be twenty, and males live to age twenty-five. While geneticists seek a miracle antidote, orphans roam the streets and polygamy abounds. After Rhine is kidnapped and sold as a bride, she is desperate to escape from her husband’s strange world, which includes a sinister father-in-law in search of the antidote and a slew of sister wives who are not to be trusted. On the cusp of her seventeenth birthday, Rhine attempts to flee—but what she finds is a society spiraling into anarchy.

My thoughts...
I very much enjoyed this novel.  The plot of a doomed future where all the new generations of children are dying off young was very original, very gripping, and very well executed.  It hooked me in right away as it was something I'd never seen in a ya-book before!  And I absolutely loved the characters and the dynamics between them.  Each relationship brought something special to the story.  SO there was this great plot and great characters and even a little romance mixed in...what I found lacking was the pacing.  It didn't really hurt things enough to ruin this story for me, just towards the middle things started to drag a bit for me.

Overall I really liked this novel...it's just a couple things annoyed me slightly.  I gave it a 4/5 because of those things.  If you want to read my rant about them...you can highlight the below text.  :)

Slight spoilers---highlight to see---

Was it just me or was this book kind of like a waiting game the whole book through?  Waiting for Rhine to finally escape the mansion she's being held captive it.  Once she develops the plan to escape it was like just hurry up and get on with it and escape already!  So, finally the end comes and things finally start happening, she escapes 3 pages away from the end...and then the book ends!  This wasn't a cliffhanger...not when the story just cuts off.  So really, this entire book was one very long beginning.

And one other thing.  It doesn't snow in Florida!!!!  Not like the blizzard at the end during their escape!  So maybe the world has changed because there is some reference to the mansion being 1000 years old...but if that's the case then you gotta let us know b/c all I could think is why is it snowing now after they just went through hurricane season!  I hate when authors make stuff up just for convenience.  Okay...end of rant.

If you liked WITHER; then you might also like...
DELIRIUM by Lauren Oliver
MATCHED by Ally Condie

Bottom Line:  Maybe.  Borrow it though.

In My Mailbox #27

'In my mailbox' is run by Kristi at The Story Siren. It's a way to showcase any new books (borrowed or bought) that you got in the past week.  Here's what I got:

WITHER by Lauren DeStefano

What if you knew exactly when you would die? Thanks to modern science, every human being has become a ticking genetic time bomb—males only live to age twenty-five, and females only live to age twenty. In this bleak landscape, young girls are kidnapped and forced into polygamous marriages to keep the population from dying out. When sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery is taken by the Gatherers to become a bride, she enters a world of wealth and privilege. Despite her husband Linden's genuine love for her, and a tenuous trust among her sister wives, Rhine has one purpose: to escape—to find her twin brother and go home. But Rhine has more to contend with than losing her freedom. Linden's eccentric father is bent on finding an antidote to the genetic virus that is getting closer to taking his son, even if it means collecting corpses in order to test his experiments. With the help of Gabriel, a servant Rhine is growing dangerously attracted to, Rhine attempts to break free, in the limted time she has left. 

MARCH {Upcoming Releases}

Here's some of the YA books coming out in March that I'm most looking forward to...

Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins
Sequel to HEXHALL

Sophie Mercer thought she was a witch. That was the whole reason she was sent to Hex Hall, a reform school for delinquent Prodigium (aka witches, shapeshifters, and fairies). But that was before she discovered the family secret, and that her hot crush, Archer Cross, is an agent for The Eye, a group bent on wiping Prodigium off the face of the earth. Turns out, Sophie’s a demon, one of only two in the world—the other being her father. What’s worse, she has powers that threaten the lives of everyone she loves. Which is precisely why Sophie decides she must go to London for the Removal, a dangerous procedure that will destroy her powers. But once Sophie arrives she makes a shocking discovery. Her new friends? They’re demons too. Meaning someone is raising them in secret with creepy plans to use their powers, and probably not for good. Meanwhile, The Eye is set on hunting Sophie down, and they’re using Acher to do it. But it’s not like she has feelings for him anymore. Does she?
Release Date: 03/01/2011

Falling Under by Gwen Hayes

Theia Alderson has always led a sheltered life in the small California town of Serendipity Falls. But when a devastatingly handsome boy appears in the halls of her school, Theia knows she's seen Haden before- not around town, but in her dreams. As the Haden of both the night and the day beckons her closer one moment and pushes her away the next, the only thing Theia knows for sure is that the incredible pull she feels towards him is stronger than her fear. And when she discovers what Haden truly is, Theia's not sure if she wants to resist him, even if the cost is her soul.

Release Date: 03/01/2011

Afterlife by Claudia Gray

The Fourth Novel in Claudia Gray's EVERNIGHT Series

Destiny awaits Bianca and Lucas . . . Bianca and Lucas have always believed they could endure anything to be together. When a twist of fate not only transforms Bianca into a wraith but also turns Lucas into a vampire—the very creature he spent his life hunting—they are left reeling. Haunted by his powerful need to kill, Lucas can turn to only one place for help . . . Evernight Academy. Bianca is determined to remain with him. But with the vampire leader of Evernight waging a war against wraiths, her former home has become the most dangerous place she could be, despite the new powers her ghostly transformation has given her. A battle between wraiths and vampires looms, and Bianca and Lucas face a terrifying new reality. They've overcome every obstacle life has thrown at them, but is their love strong enough to survive the challenges after life?

Release Date: 03/08/2011

Steel by Carrie Vaughn

Sixteen-year-old Jill has fought in dozens of fencing tournaments, but she has never held a sharpened blade. When she finds a corroded sword piece on a Caribbean beach, she is instantly intrigued and pockets it as her own personal treasure. The broken tip holds secrets, though, and it transports Jill through time to the deck of a pirate ship. Stranded in the past and surrounded by strangers, she is forced to sign on as crew. But a pirate's life is bloody and brief, and as Jill learns about the dark magic that brought her there, she forms a desperate scheme to get home—one that risks everything in a duel to the death with a villainous pirate captain.

Release Date: 03/15/2011

The Dark and Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan

FOREST OF HANDS AND TEETH Book 3

There are many things that Annah would like to forget: the look on her sister's face when she and Elias left her behind in the Forest of Hands and Teeth, her first glimpse of the horde as they found their way to the Dark City, the sear of the barbed wire that would scar her for life. But most of all, Annah would like to forget the morning Elias left her for the Recruiters. Annah's world stopped that day and she's been waiting for him to come home ever since. Without him, her life doesn't feel much different from that of the dead that roam the wasted city around her. Then she meets Catcher and everything feels alive again. Except, Catcher has his own secrets -- dark, terrifying truths that link him to a past Annah's longed to forget, and to a future too deadly to consider. And now it's up to Annah -- can she continue to live in a world drenched in the blood of the living? Or is death the only escape from the Return's destruction?

Release Date: 03/22/2011

Wither by Lauren DeStefano
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?
Release Date: 03/22/2011

Wake Into Me by Lisa Cach

Caitlyn Monahan knows she belongs somewhere else. It's what her dead mother's note suggested, and it's what her recurring nightmares allude to. Desperate to flee these terrifying dreams--and her small town--she accepts a spot at a boarding school in France. Only, when she arrives, her nightmares get worse. But then there are her amazing dreams, so vivid and so real, with visits from an alluring, mysterious, and gorgeous Italian boy from the 1500s. Caitlyn knows they are soul mates, but how can she be in love with someone who exists only in her dreams? Then, as her reality and dream world collide, Caitlyn searches for the real reason why she was brought to this school. And what she discovers will change her life forever.
Release Date: 03/31/2011