Wither

The Chemical Garden Trilogy

By: Lauren DeStefano

Narrated by: Angela Lin

Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

Lauren DeStefano makes a stellar debut with this chilling tale. The first installment of a planned trilogy, Wither introduces listeners to a bleak world where a mysterious disease kills most women by the age of 20 and men by the age of 25. Like many girls her age, 16-year-old Rhine has been captured and forced into marriage in an effort to keep the population growing. But, despite her new husband’s wealth, she wants nothing more than to escape her servitude and return home before time runs out.

©2011 Lauren DeStefano (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC

Chemical Trilogy

What did you love best about Wither?

I loved that the wives became sisters. So much was taken from them and for a while they had each other and acted like sisters fighting and loving each other. I also like that Rine is the middle ground between her sister wives. I am not a middle child but so often these herions in books are the special youngest or oldest child, the middle seems magical, eclectic and essencial for balance.

What other book might you compare Wither to and why?

I would compare Wither to The hunger Games, it's set in a desolate world with two people groups segregated from each other and from the harsh realities of that world. Instead of children females are the victems of this world, a dieing race in need of reinforcements in this fast withering world.

What didn’t you like about Angela Lin’s performance?

I did not like Angela Lin's mouth noices. I've listened to a lot of autible books lately and this is the first one that did not mask her airy cotton mouth gulps. While I attribute her breathiness to being part of the performance I wish she has taken more care in masking these sounds between the gaps she prolonged. There were a lot of gaps in which she swallowed audibly. Other than that I felt connected to the characters through her voice, from the hyper sister to the men. They were consistant and I recongized who was speaking when she spoke as the other characters.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

I love that Rine made a point to leave her husband with a heart felt masked goodbye. She may have felt like she had left things unfinished had she not.

Haunting

This book has haunted me for a long time. I read it so long ago, and revisited it with this audiobook. It's just as riveting and disturbing as ever. And it makes you treasure the time you have on this earth, and the freedom you have to enjoy that time with. Excellent listen.

#tagsgiving

It's a great book. I loved it! i has a great story line and I found myself wanting to listen all of the time. Looking forward to reading book to ASAP.

Very Strange. In a Good Way.

I bought this book when it first came out, and then for some reason, I waited 7 years to get around to reading it. That's how stupid I am, because once I picked this up, I could not put it down. I read it straight through and tuned out the whole rest of the world until I finished.

This is a mess, and I loved it. This is a dystopian YA, and while I've read a lot of books in this genre, and there are obviously some similarities in this world to some other dystopian worlds I've read about, I still founds this one to be . . . unexpected.

It's definitely dark, twisty, and occasionally uncomfortable. So, of course, I love that.

Plus, it has a love triangle, which quite frankly is an aspect of YA that I almost always enjoy. Because, come on! A girl needs choices. She can't just fall for the first broody male on the scene. Give me two, or even three options, as far as I'm concerned. Let's stop pretending that the whole world falls in love with the first person they ever kiss, because let's face it. That's the exception, not the rule.

Captivating story.

The author made you care about each character as the story progresses in a dark but thrilling tone and the narrator did amazing to portray the characters and help visualize the story.

I think there is potential for this author but...

While the subject of the story intrigued me, listening to it I felt like a voyeur. I felt like I was gawking at a car accident. I was looking for a good science fiction yarn, but this was a poorly written teen romance in a flimsy disguise.
I think the narrator did a respectable job voicing a vapid protagonist, but I enjoyed her work best on some of the secondary characters. That being said, the style that she used for the protagonist fit the character to a tee.
Rhine, the central character who tells the story, has a lot of very tough choices to make. The dilemmas are thought provoking but the heroine's decision-making can be painful to endure at times. There is good depth to her character, I feel, and although I was rooting for her I found myself wishing she was a stronger person and felt let down by her. She is very much in line with Bella from the Twilight series or a weak character in an Edwardian romance. If that was the author's intent - she succeeded admirably. The secondary character were more clear in their convictions and intents and in some ways more enjoyable for those reasons.
The story itself, however, requires a HUGE suspension of disbelief; it is just not a sustainable premise. For a lover of science fiction, it could be infuriating at times. I couldn't see any way the society the author described could have existed. The idea that women live only until age 20 and men only until 25, that America is the only existing populated place left, and yet cars still run, swanky parties still occur in fancy bars, rich people still have limousines, and 20 year old men are architects selling building designs was too much for me to swallow.
I think, though, that a lot of this can be forgiven if the author is young and this is her first published work. Most of the really awkward parts of the story seem to suggest lack of experience on the part of the author. She may grow to be a better writer if she sticks to subjects she know more about. But, my biggest issue by far: who edited this?!?!?! Some of the phrases are extremely awkward but could be so simply re-written for clarity, flow and style. Not to mention the glaring errors in fact. At one point the main character relates how she read in an encyclopedia that Christopher Columbus proved the earth was round by sailing around the world in the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria!!!
Maybe this heroine is just not my cup of tea. I like independent, strong-willed characters like Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching in the Wee Free Men series and Daphne in Nation, Derek Landy's Stephanie/Valkyrie from the Scullduggery Bones series, Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next (although not in the audio book version), Scott Westerfeld's Deryn Sharp from the Leviathan series and even Jane Eyre, herself (for a romance comparison). I did finish the book, and would be interested to know what happens, but I won't be paying for the other books and doubt I'd even get them from the library.

Remarkably unremarkable.

"Struggled to finish?" is putting it mildly. This book was tantamount to torture...and I almost didn't finish it. My optimistic nature kept me plugging away listening hoping that it would somehow reveal a surprise depth in the story. Alas, no, between the drab, sluggish performance of the reader and the drab, sluggish writing itself I was strung along with no revealing redemption in the story. it was just plain boring.

Wither is exactly what I did while listening!

This could have been a good one. It had potential, but that potential along with my credit withered away. I just got so frustrated with the narrators droning on and on, with the characters making no real sense, and with the authors depressing, endless misery she kept doling out. I had to stop listening.

Please don't waste a credit, and please don't encourage any YA reader to either.