Synopsis: 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?
Review: I'll be honest, this was a re-read for me and I loved this book the first time I read it. I liked seeing the aspect of multiple wives and how that was handled, especially because they were all different. My tastes have changed a fair amount and I didn't like it nearly as much this time around. I thought Rhine was interesting, and I liked seeing how she navigated situations without her twin brother. that being said, I wish we actually got to see her interact with her twin. I think she would have felt more fleshed out if we saw those moments versus them being presented as flashbacks. I still loved Jenna. She is the oldest of the wives and she seems to be the most realistic of the 3. For the most part, the characters didn't feel realistic. They were more like caricatures which was a pity.
I thought the story concept was interesting, and I appreciated how this story seemed to bridge our current reality with a dystopian future. Much like The Handmade's Tale. The thing this book does well is make our characters think about the role of a woman. There is a scene where Rhine realizes babies are taken from their mothers and given to wet nurses as a way to cut the relationship between mother and child. That moment was great and tragic. I didn't care much for Gabriel, but I did like how subtle he was with putting candy in Rhine's napkin. I've had a friend do something similar for me, and it's a nice reminder that people are looking out for you and that they care. Those were the highlights of the story. For the most part, it felt bland. I also kept getting annoyed by little things about the weather, like how there were constant hurricanes. This is set in Florida. I live in South Carolina. The southeast gets hurricanes frequently, but not that frequently. Even with the current climate issue. There's also a note about how America was the only country to survive World War 3 because we were the most technologically advanced. That is another thing that will never be accurate. Moments like that kept taking me out of the story.
Interesting concept, but poor development.
3 howls
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