Wither by Lauren DeStefano

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?"- summary from Amazon

DeStefano's debut is a certified page-turner with a detailed dystopic world-building, poetic prose, and realistic, flawed characters. I absolutely loved it and it was really hard to put down. Throughout most of the book, I was on the edge of my seat in suspense, wondering what would happen next.

Even though this is a dystopian and not exactly fun and games, I still really liked the characters. Each one had their own voice, motives, perspective and were just really well-written. I loved seeing Rhine and Gabriel together and their scenes together were really sweet.

Overall, this is a book that really lives up to its beautiful cover. It's a fantastic start to a dystopian trilogy and I'm excited to see where the story goes next.

(I apologize for the very short, vague-ish review. I read this several months ago, really did love and enjoy it- I read like 100 pages in one sitting- but only just now got around to writing the review.)

FTC: Received ARC via Around the World Tours. Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.