Wither by Lauren DeStefano
My rating: 3/5 cats
so this is the handmaid’s tale for kids. with some new details for the modern set. premise: world is basically over. only north america survives, but barely – like one step better than the road. due to genetic manipulation and subsequent oopses, there are considerably lower life expectancies: girls live to be twenty, boys to twenty-five. then – coughing, blood, expiration.
so, to keep the population going, and to provide new babies to experiment with, many young girls are kidnapped and sold into marriages where they are treated like goddesses, frankly, except they can’t leave and they are expected to fulfill all those wifely duties with the highest bidder.
see, here is my problem. if the world was shitty enough that you had to live in the basement with only your twin brother for company, nailing shut the door to prevent thieves and murderers from breaking in and holding knives to your throats, and afraid to go outside unprotected because marauders would kidnap you and maybe sell you into prostitution, only one day you do get captured (this is all in the first couple of pages, so don’t start putting your hands over your ears and going “lalalalalala”) and they plop you in a mansion to be one of three brides to a wealthy man with a pool and a library and a bevvy of stylists who make dresses just for you and cooks who bring you whatever you want at any time. i mean – what’s the big deal?? if you are going to die in four years anyway, why not live like this?? tolerate some fumbled caresses (that are all too easy to deter, anyway) and sit around reading and drinking hot cocoa until you cough yourself to death?
do i just not value my liberty??
is it because i technically have no siblings so i don’t understand the family-pull??
am i just too soft and domesticated?
i could totally be a kept woman if the alternative was freezing and starving to death. i mean – you die when you are twenty in a world with very little left. what, are you going to have a career?? not likely.
me, i will be eating the chocolate covered strawberries on the trampoline, thank you very much. does this reflect poorly on my character?
and i didn’t dislike the book, but i just couldn’t relate to the character. the whole time, i’m like – come on, girl, it isn’t that bad… but i will totally read the next two books in this trilogy, especially if ariel isn’t mad at me for not loving it as much as she did.
i definitely think this book will be popular with the teens, but with more ambitious and less comfort-loving girls than me…
going to curl up now with netflix and pomegranate iced tea.
