Goodreads Synopsis:

 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?


Wither by Lauren DeStefano
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book was...not my favorite. I had a hard time pinpointing exactly what I didn't like about it. I'm thinking that my major issue is that it lacked substance. We never got to know any of the characters very well. It is difficult to feel an attachment to something that you don't understand very well. We were told what the physical appearance of everyone was but there wasn't any emotional depth. I shouldn't say there wasn't any, there just wasn't very much. Whenever a character died, I thought that the feelings were described accurately...but...it all just seemed like dystopic book writing by numbers. It seemed really formulated. I especially despised the way that the book ended.

I understand that this book is the first in a series (as all books have to do now :S)but I just wanted a tad bit more of a hook. The ending of this book gave me no incentive to read the next one. I will because I want to see how the story evolves, but from the way the book ended I wouldn't have even known that it was part of a series if I hadn't looked it up.

Sterile. I think that's the word that I'm looking for. This story is sterile. The main character was a victim of a crime that was running rampant throughout her time period. She knew it would happen and she knew what was expected of her. Nothing bad really happened to her. She was kidnapped but she wasn't raped, she was treated like a queen, and she was angsty as all get out. Her emotions are really confusing. She loves Gabriel...but she kind of loves her husband...but she can't love him because his father kidnapped her and he doesn't even know it...but she likes the way he makes her feel...but she needs to get out just so she can prove that she can...it is all so annoying. It's difficult to get into a book if you don't like the main character. That's what happened with me here. Hopefully the books will progress and I will grow to like her. I guess we'll see!

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