Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Book Worth Reading: WITHER by Lauren Destefano

Okay, this was not the best book that I have read this year.  BUT, I read the whole thing from cover to cover in less than a day and I think that really says something.

Pros:  I found the storyline to be seriously interesting and entertaining.  It's a dystopian book (my favorite genre) and we are wrapped in a world where in an attempt to create a generation of artificially engineered babies that are immune to cancer, something has gone terribly wrong with the next generation.  When the children of this perfect generation reach a certain age, they die.  25 for boys, and 20 for girls.  I know, this part sounds sort of like that movie that came out last year with Justin Timberlake but the rest of the book is totally different.

Some people in this world think that if everyone is just going to die so young, then the human race ought to just give up and die out.  Other people want to continue procreating new generations of children in the hopes of someone finding a cure.  Of course, this means that childhoods must be very short because girls don't have much time to bear children before they die.

In order to get the best chance of procreation in the quickest amount of time, wealthy people have turned to kidnapping pretty girls and forcing them into polygamous marriages.  That is exactly what happens to the main character in this book.

The action starts right away and really never stops.  I never found a boring part of the book so I never had a chance to set it down and get on with my day.

Cons:  There are some loose ends that might bother some readers and the author could have done a lot more in the character development department.  Some of the main characters were very well developed, but others we knew little about.  Most annoying to me was how little the reader knows about the love interest by the end of the book, even though he was part of the story from very early on.  Of COURSE this book is part of a trilogy so I am thinking that the author will develop the characters more in the second book.

Best book I have read this year or not, I really am looking forward to reading the next one.  Book 2 in the Chemical Garden Trilogy is called FEVER and it just came out last week.  I am already on the waiting list at the Dallas Public Library and am excited to see what happens next!

P.S.  It was recently announced that WITHER is going to become a movie!  I love it when that happens with good YA books!

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