Wither by Lauren DeStefano

Author - Lauren DeStefano
Publisher - Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
Release Date - March 22 2011

Wither.

One definition of wither is to dry up as part of the process of dying. Another one is to fade or lose freshness of vitality. Both of the definition was shown in this book.

Rhine was a sixteen year old girl who has been abducted by the Gatherers to be the House Governor’s wife.

Sixteen?

Be a wife?

Really?

Yep, that’s right.

How about the other wives?

One was I think Eighteen or Seventeen and the other one was Thirteen.

What?! Really?

Yep.

This book was set up in a dystopian setting where girls die at the age of 20 and the boys die at 25. This was due to an experiment conducted to perfect humans so that everybody would be healthy. All the first generation experiments were good they were healthy and everything but the following generations had the disease that kills them when they reached a certain age. Girls were kidnapped and inspected (yep inspected like some sort of animal). If they were good enough they keep them to be sold to the wealthy people to become wives of the House Governors but if not then they either get left somewhere or worse they get killed.

Rhine Ellery had been abducted. She and other girls were kidnapped and were kept inside a van until they reached a facility where they get inspected. Rhine and two other girls (Jenna and Cecily) passed the inspection and were handed over to the Ashbury’s to become the House Governor’s wife.

Rhine maybe Linden’s wife but she will never allow him to sleep with her. They may share the same bed every once in a while but she couldn’t let him get what he want from her. She was the only one of the three wives that hasn’t slept with Linden.

Why?

Because aside from her distaste of being a prisoner in the mansion and leaving her twin brother behind, she was already in love with someone else, Gabriel.


For the review:

I would have to say that I like the concept of the book. I like how the whole thing was thought of.

Rhine as a character was very fearless. I loved her. She was not the kind of heroine that was useless or clumsy or very dependent on the guys in the books. She herself thinks of ways on how she could get out of the situation she was in. She was the perfect example of GIRL POWER! YEAH!!

Gabriel wasn’t the typical handsome and rich leading man. He was sweet and gentle. What’s not to like about him? :)

And as for Linden Ashby, I really feel bad for him. He seems like a nice guy. He was very oblivious to what his deranged father was doing. He lost his first love and failed capturing the heart of Rhine. He may have everything materially but still I guess that really isn’t enough to make people happy.

Jenna and Cecily were the two other wives of Linden. They both have character of their own. They were not lifeless like most of the secondary characters. Jenna was the silent rebel type. She didn’t have anything to lose. Jenna didn’t like to be where she was but still she didn’t want to do anything about it because she thought there was no use in doing it. Cecily (the thirteen year old) on the other hand was very happy to be one of the wives. She was the first one who got pregnant of the three. Her character was probably one of the things I didn’t like in this book. I don’t really want kids getting pregnant. She was so so young. :(( I thought that maybe the author could have made her older than 13.

And there’s Linden’s evil mad doctor father, Housemaster Vaughn. I hate him and I want to beat the crap out of him. I don’t like what he did to those people. He was controlling, cunning and just plain EVIL! I mean I am not a pronaturalist if I was there. Of course I would like to find a cure for the disease but then what he was doing was just so out of the line. He said he was doing it for his son but I actually don’t really think so!

Anyways, all in all I liked the book. It was a little slow for me but still it was good. I would recommend the book for those who enjoy dystopian genre. It is a good read. It was simply written. The author didn’t make use of very complex words probably because the narrator Rhine was young. The book was good but did not really excite me that much.

I will give this book 3.5 stars!