While dystopian novels are one of young adult literature’s most popular genres, Wither by Lauren DeStefano is a novel marketed as a utopian novel. Wither takes place hundreds of years in the future after a cure for ailments has gone awry. While scientists were able to cure children of any and all diseases, healthy girls began dying at the age of 20 and boys at 25. While scientists are busy looking for the new cure, Rhine Ellery is separated from her twin brother and forced into marriage to bear children. Although Rhine eventually gets along with her shy, somewhat clueless husband, she is horrified to learn what lengths her father-in-law is willing to go to find the cure and begins looking for a way to escape. All the books in The Chemical Garden Trilogy are the perfect antidote to the deluge of violent dystopian books like Veronica Roth’s Divergent and Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. DeStefano’s protagonists are realistic, while the villains are multidimensional, and the plot moves quickly making reading all three books in a sitting entirely plausible. While the book may be better suited to older young adults, the themes and questions that arise throughout concerning women, genetics, family, and responsibility are provocative and substantial.