Review: Eve, Anna Carey

Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 336
Genre: Dystopian, YA
Release: October 2011
Source: ARC from Book Ecpo America
Nice to know: Eve is Anna Carey's debutnovel, and the first book in a planned trilogy. There are currently plans about making the books into a TV - Series by the people who make the Vampire Diaries come to life on screen.

The year is 2032, sixteen years after a deadly virus—and the vaccine intended to protect against it—wiped out most of the earth’s population. The night before eighteen-year-old Eve’s graduation from her all-girls school she discovers what really happens to new graduates, and the horrifying fate that awaits her.  Fleeing the only home she’s ever known, Eve sets off on a long, treacherous journey, searching for a place she can survive. Along the way she encounters Caleb, a rough, rebellious boy living in the wild. Separated from men her whole life, Eve has been taught to fear them, but Caleb slowly wins her trust...and her heart. He promises to protect her, but when soldiers begin hunting them, Eve must choose between true love and her life.

A disappointing dystopian

Eve was one of the YA - books I was mostly looking forward to this year. The premise for the novel sounded interesting, even though there are a lot of dystopian books being published these days. Sadly the book didn't live up to my expectations.

A virus have killed a lot of people, and the remaing population are trying to build a new society behind the walls of a new town founded in the desert. Boys and girls are kept separate, and attend separate boarding schools. Eve is 16 years old, and was taken away from her mother when her mother got infected with the virus. Eve has lived most of her life inside the walls of her school, and she is looking forward to her graduation and to utilize some of the talents she has been tought over the years. The girls have been taught that life outside the school's walls are dangerous, and that boys and men are not to be trusted. They will only take advantage of a girl.

a relationship between two people can be judged by the list of things unspoken between them.

The day before her graduation, Eve makes a discovery that makes her question everyting she has been told. She understands that a horrible fate awaits her, and escapes from the school and out into a world where she does not know who she can trust.

for days in the wild, only the birds spoke to me. The stream was the only hand that touched me, the wind the only breath tht blew the dust from my eyes. I learned the strange art of loneliness, the weathered yearning that swells and passes, swells and passes, when you walk a trail alone.

Eve comes off to a good start. The author sets the atmosphere, and I am instantly interested in finding out more about Eve and her world. The suspense continues until Eve meets Caleb, from that point I lost interest in the story. Considering the things Eve have been taught at school, I find it hard to believe that Caleb and his friends gain Eve's trust so fast. The pace of the story also changed, and made me think of Lord of the Flies.

I also had a hard time sympatizing with Eve, my sympathies was with another female character. She had all the qualities I look for in a YA - heroine. Eve was to weak in my opinion, and I did not understand her motivations, for example I was puzzled that she chose to flee from school and leave her best friend in the arms of a terrible, terrible fate. Eve also has a hard time surviving by herself, she needs help from other characters.

Happiness is a moment.

Later in the book, when Eve meets Marjorie Cross, I thought that the author was inspired by the Stand by Stephen King.

On the back of the ARC Eve is compared to the Hunger Games. That is not a good comparison. Eve does not come close to Katniss, and the book lacks a lot of the depth one can find in the Hunger Games.

Eve is a light read, that will entertain you in the moment. But it is not a book I wil remember for long, and that makes me sad because the story had so much potensial. Anne Carey is a good writer, she knows her way around words, but Eve was not my favorite dystopian read.


Other reviews:
I Swim for Oceans
Reading Teen
Chick Loves Lit

Anna Carey's website can be found here, and you can visit the author on Goodreads here.