This next book I’m about to tell you to read just proves the power of a raptured audience.  If we like your story, we’ll tell the world.  And that’s how I found out about this amazing series—through the grapevine of teenagers freaking out everywhere.  The Chemical Garden series, written by Lauren DeStefano, reads a lot like Hunger Games (first person present).  If you’re a reader who could care less about the technical side of a story, ignore that last part.  You’ll enjoy it anyway.  The first book, “Wither”, is so compelling she had me biting on my nails after page one.

Rhine is a sixteen-year-old girl who has been kidnapped and sold as one of three brides.  Polygamy!  Ew…some of you may be thinking, but no one is growing to adulthood anymore, genetically altered, boys die and twenty-five, and girls at twenty.  They need more babies if the human race is going to survive.

Even though the premise of this book could have easily gotten graphic and disgusting, the author didn’t go there. Halleluiah!  It’s clean with many surprising twists and turns, all leading up to Rhine escaping from her captors, and is now making her way home to her twin brother in New York.

I can’t wait for book two, which is “Fever” by the way.  “Sever” is the third.  If I knew who had “Fever” checked out right now from my library, I’d be banging on their door to hand it over.  Yes, it’s that good.