Overview: The Chemical Garden Trilogy by Lauren DeStefano

If you've enjoyed books of the recently popular genre, dystopian, The Chemical Garden trilogy (Wither, Fever, Sever) is a good reading option for you. Be wary of younger readers, however. While these books may not be technically graphic, there is a lot of insinuated mature content, as well as elements and situations that some might find disturbing. The Chemical Garden trilogy introduces us to a world in which genetic experiments have gone too far and the youth generation is now infected with a condition that causes all males to die at age 25 and females to die at age 20. There are many who have set out to find a cure and in order to do that, they feel there need to be as many children born as possible to try and find any genetic details or coding that may help find a cure. Since there is an abundant want for babies and children, rich males participate in polygamy (sometimes the women...well, girls...are willing, sometimes they are not). Hence, the disturbing and mature content. In case you're wondering, rape does not take place these stories, unless you count the statutory kind, i.e., a sexual encounter involving an under-aged girl (though in this case she is extremely willing). The thing about the content of these stories is that many people were appalled by the forced polygamy and sex between an adult male and an under-aged girl. I think what's important when reading though, is to try to understand what it's like to live in the world presented in the story. It is also important to understand that the author is not condoning forced polygamy or sex with a minor. Instead she's showing us a fictional world that has become very, very dark and especially difficult for young women to live in. The narrator of the story is Rhine, a young woman who has been kidnapped and forced into a polygamous marriage involving a young man and two other young women. As she is trapped in a mansion with the other wives, she forms close bonds with them as well as one with a particular handsome house worker. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, she becomes quite close with her new husband, Lindon. Her father-in-law however, is a different story. Though he appears to be pleasant, Rhine suspects that he is hiding something very dark in the mansion's basement, as well as in his heart and mind. Will a cure be found? How will Rhine fit into it? How can there be hope in such a dark, frightening world? Read The Chemical Garden Trilogy to find out. (: