What would it be like to know you would die in four years?

WITHER, author Lauren DeStefano’s debut young adult novel and Book 1 in The Chemical Garden Trilogy, brings us into just such a dystopian world where modern science has created a genetic time bomb.

In a botched effort to perfect the human race, scientists have released a virus into the DNA that has left all males with a lifespan of just twenty-five years and females with only twenty years to live. While geneticists are searching for a miracle cure to restore a normal lifespan, girls as young as thirteen are being kidnapped and sold into polygamous marriages to keep the population going until an antidote is found.