Wither by Lauren DeStefano

This was one of the books on my Goodreads suggestions list. All it had to tell me was that it was dystopian, had polygamy, and dealt with kidnapping and stockholm syndrome and I was sold!

Rhine is a sixteen year old girl in Manhattan who lives in a world where science has screwed up and has made it so girls only live till they're twenty and boys until they are twenty-five. Rhine's parents were working on a cure when they were murdered in a terrorist attack and she was left alone with her twin brother Rowan. They take turns sleeping each night to protect their home and each other from thieves and the "Gatherers" who round up young girls to be sold into prostitution and sexual slavery as brides to rich men.

Rhine ends up getting "gathered" with a bunch of other girls and forced to marry Linden. a wealthy governor in Florida, along with two other girls. Far from everything she knows and love she decides that she must escape and return home to her brother. But escape seems futile because the brides are watched and restricted to certain areas of the mansion that is impossible to escape. Her only way out is to make Linden fall in love with her so he will make her the First Wife. First Wives are the favorites of their husbands and get more privileges and freedom than her sister wives. Rhine achieves this goal and attends parties and events with Linden all the while determined to escape with the servant Gabriel whom she has fallen in love with.

This book was good for the first book in the series. I enjoyed the feel of this decaying society clinging to the hope of a cure and the disenchanted older generation that due to science are near immortal and all major illnesses have been done away with. Rhine doesn't feel like a sixteen year old to me but that is easily explained by the world she lives in and the death of her parents. Her sister wives can get a little annoying (especially Cecily but she's like fourteen). That also bothered me a lot. Linden's underaged wife. She's fourteen! Hardly at an age where she can give consent and know the consequences of her actions. She feels like a kid playing house the entirety of the book.

All in all it was an enjoyable book I look forward to the rest of the series because this book has so much potential.

Predictions for the rest of the series: Because Rhine and Rowen have heterochromia (two different eye colors) and because their parents were some big wig scientists I think we're going to find out that Rhine and Rowan are the key to the cure (or are test tube babies/clones and will age and live normally). Rhine will end up with Gabriel (though I would not entirely mind if she ended up with Linden) and Linden's father will be killed by one of his horrible experiments.