Review of Wither by Lauren DeStefano

WITHER (#1) 
By: Lauren DeStefano 
Review by: Kaede
Release Date: March 22nd, 2011
Publisher: Simon & Schuster 
Pages: 358
Format: Paperback
Source: Bought

 

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?

When I started WITHER, I'm not quite certain what I expected from it. But it certainly wasn't what I got, although I couldn't be more pleased. 

Captivating me with it's writing style from the very beginning, it was almost like there was a certain ease for me when it came to reading WITHER. Flipping pages after pages without the thought of putting it down was natural, and it had me wanting to stay up late to finishing it. Now for me, that is the markings of a good book. 

I found that I felt something different for a lot of the characters we meet in WITHER. While I'm not sure if I connected with Rhine to the extent that I have with some other heroines, her narrative was one I enjoyed. I liked Rhine because she was strong and felt real to me. Trapped in a pretty prison, Rhine is determined to escape, find her brother, and return to the life she was forcefully taken from. But will there be some things not worth forsaking for a chance at freedom? Linden was a bit of a difficult character for me to place my feelings on, because in one sense I did like him, but in another I really hated him. Hated him for being able to be so blissfully naive and ignorant of the world outside when so many people - Rhine included - don't have that opportunity. But also like Rhine, I couldn't bring myself to ever fully hate him completely, or really at all...too much, and found that maybe I did like Linden. Although I couldn't stop the voice in the back of my head that hoped that somebody would tell Linden everything that his father had done. Anybody? 

Rhine's relationship with her sister wives was something I liked seeing, because the contrast in all three of them was so apparent. Their views differed, and yet they were still able to form a connection. Cecily was my least favorite of the three because there were times where she really annoyed me, but I could understand where she was coming from. Cecily is the youngest, a bit of a dreamer, and believes the mansion is a place she can be happy, especially considering that she has everything now when she had nothing before. 

Vaughn was a slightly disturbing character, because of all the things he did without so much of a second thought. I think he's the type of person that if I knew him in real life, every time he enters the same room, I'd run out because...well...uhm...I like to live? 

All in all, I think you can definitely tell the characters and their relationships were my favorite part of WITHER. From Gabriel to Jenna, there was something interesting about each individual we meet in the story. DeStefano was also able to create Rowan, a character we don't know officially, but is described by Rhine to the point where I can have such a clear view of him that it's almost like he was present in the story the whole time. 

The world building aspect was satisfying, but it definitely isn't this series's strong point. I know that there are a lot of readers who consider the world building weak, but personally I've never really saw detailed, plausible world building as a requirement for a enjoyable dystopian. It's nice to have certainly, but if there are other elements I enjoyed, and the world seems possible, then it's good enough for me most of the time, which worked in WITHER's favor. 

Essentially, Lauren DeStefano's writing is not only simply solid, but comes so naturally you can't help but be pulled in. If you can put aside the fact that you probably won't find one of the most layered and complex worlds in young adult dystopian, I think there is a very good chance you'll really like WITHER. I mean, honestly, there had to be something special about it if I was so insistent on finishing it in one night, even though I had two exams the next day and I barely had enough time to study because I was reading.

If anything, Lauren DeStefano is the type of author that I feel will only get better and better, and so I will definitely read every book she comes out with from here on with confidence that they'll be amazing. 

4 coffee cups! 

~♥~

Contact Kaede: 

Email: kimberlyho75@yahoo.com

Goodreads: Kaede
Twitter: Kami178xx

Review of What's Left Of Me by Kat Zhang

by: Sarah
Release Date: September 18th, 2012
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 343 pages
Series: Hybrid Chronicles #1
Source: ARC provided via Netgalley

I should not exist. But I do.
Eva and Addie started out the same way as everyone else—two souls woven together in one body, taking turns controlling their movements as they learned how to walk, how to sing, how to dance. But as they grew, so did the worried whispers. Why aren’t they settling? Why isn’t one of them fading? The doctors ran tests, the neighbors shied away, and their parents begged for more time. Finally Addie was pronounced healthy and Eva was declared gone. Except, she wasn’t . . .
For the past three years, Eva has clung to the remnants of her life. Only Addie knows she’s still there, trapped inside their body. Then one day, they discover there may be a way for Eva to move again. The risks are unimaginable-hybrids are considered a threat to society, so if they are caught, Addie and Eva will be locked away with the others. And yet . . . for a chance to smile, to twirl, to speak, Eva will do anything.

Here's a funny story: I actually requested this on Netgalley by accident. Yeah. But I figured oh well I probably won't get approved for this anyway and promptly forgot about the whole thing. Then, weeks later, imagine my surprise when I received an email saying I'd been approved. Clearly this is an act of a higher power and I was meant to read this book. (I said to myself.) So I dropped everything and dove in.

So. Two things,first off:

1. From me to this book: it's not you, it's me. No really. I'm not just saying that. No. No, no there's no one else. Nothing like that. Please don't cry. I hope we can still be friends. P.S. I want my pink shirt back. 

2. This is one of those books that you have to really suspend your disbelief for from the get-go. I am very bad at doing this. Well actually I guess I should say I am very unpredictably good at this. Sometimes a book can start out with the most nonsensical shit and I'm just like yes this is happening I accept this reality and then I breathe softly onto my monocle and rub it against my smoking jacket before popping it back into place. And sometimes I just go eeeehhhhhwhatno. That's what happened with this book, unfortunately. Early on in reading I kept impatiently waiting for a big breakdown of what this having two souls/hybrid thing was all about...I guess you're just supposed to be like okay this is a thing. It's not really a fault but I just was expecting something different, so let's cross that one off as my bad.

Now onto things that were your bad, book. In the same vein as my previous gripe, there's a big lack of explanation going on in this book; the world building is virtually non-existent. I'm still confused as to why the war that's periodically referred to even happened (it's glossed over a few times but never fully explained) , why hybrids are seen as this big bad threat to society (again, kind of touched on but nowhere near as in depth as it should have been), and what time period is this even taking place in? This is another fault of mine but I went into this book expecting a dystopian future, but I remember Eva mentioning during the wars that there was no TV News and all the battles were depicted through paintings, which leads me to believe it's a dystopian present. I think? Maybe I just had my brain turned off when I read this book but I was lost on all that. I'm usually not someone who needs heaps of backstory to enjoy a book but in this case it was a constant distraction. Particularly during scenes where Addie and Eva are starting to rage against the machine..there was a line that went something like "we're going against everything we've been taught about settling (the term for the submissive soul to fade into oblivion)" and it wasn't nearly as powerful as it could have been because I had no idea what they'd been taught about settling except that it was good and not settling was double plus ungood. I also find it very very hard to believe that a parent would just so willingly accept one of their children disappearing? I'm not really an expert on the matter but this isn't like The Giver where emotion doesn't exist and shit love is a normal thing in this society so I just don't see how loving parents would be like "well bye less extroverted child sorry you didn't make the cut see ya never!"

This book didn't really get going until last 90 or so pages, but the end was a pretty good set up to the next book in this series. I had pretty much convinced myself I didn't have any interest in continuing on but now I'm not so sure. But most importantly, as I said earlier, there's really nothing horribly wrong with this book. In my opinion it's a unique, interesting, and poignant novel. The sibling relationships being the focus while the "romance" being on the backburner was definitely refreshing in a YA novel like this. This book is definitely worth a read. It just didn't really hit the mark with me but it's got a very Never Let Me Go Jr. feel to it and I think young people who maybe couldn't quite grasp the depth or hang with the intensity of a book like NLMG could really sink they're little baby teeth into something like this. Not to say any adult who enjoyed this have baby teeth, I'm sure your teeth are very mature for their age.

PS: Looking through reviews I've seen several people say they had a hard time concentrating while reading this and found themselves putting it down a lot or not being able to really get into it. I had this problem too, which might be a contributing factor on why I wasn't over the moon with it. Hmm!

2.75 cups of out 5!

Kaede my sweet princess, I HAD to get on board with this coffee cup idea of yours because it's adorable. Hope you don't mind! You know what they say, imitation is the greatest form of stealing :P