Review: Wither

What if you knew exactly when you’d die? The first book of The Chemical Garden Trilogy.By age sixteen, Rhine Ellery has four years left to live. A botched effort to create a perfect race has left all males born with a lifespan of 25 years, and females a lifespan of 20 years--leaving the world in a state of panic. Geneticists seek 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 sold as a bride, she vows to do all she can to escape. Yet 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 has no way to communicate to her twin brother that she is safe and alive. 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?

From Goodreads: Obviously, something went terribly wrong. Genetic mutations have festered, reducing human longevity to twenty-five, even less for most women. To prevent extinction, young girls are kidnapped, mated in polygamous marriages with men eager to procreate. Sixteen-year-old Rhine Ellery, a recent victim of this breeding farm mentality, has vowed to break loose from its fetters; but finding allies and a safe way out is a challenge she can only hope she will survive. A dystopian fantasy series starter with wings.
My Review: I heard many good things about this book but I have to be honest. Rhine the main character sounded like a whiney brat to me. I KNOW she was brought to the marriage against her will and most people in that circumstance would want out. I couldn’t but help think that she has it so much better than her previous life so why does she try and make it sound like she is stuck in a prison.
To be honest it is a prison but come on. She has a servant who does almost anything for her. She gets to go out to all the best parties and she basically gets everything she wants. Yet she spends the whole book moping. I can understand she wants to get back to her twin brother but seriously. Cut out the poor me mentality. It is irritating and gets on my nerves.
That aside the book was well written. The world building and the character growth is amazing. Nothing much happens in the way of the plot but I guess not much can happen while you are at home most of the time. I had mixed feelings about this book. I want to read Fever and see what happens next but it is not a book that I went crazy over.