Eve - Anna Carey
Synopsis: Where do you go when nowhere is safe?
Sixteen years after a deadly virus wiped out most of Earth’s population, the world is a perilous place. Eighteen-year-old Eve has never been beyond the heavily guarded perimeter of her school, where she and two hundred other orphaned girls have been promised a future as the teachers and artists of the New America. But the night before graduation, Eve learns the shocking truth about her school’s real purpose—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 Arden, her former rival from school, and 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. In this epic new series, Anna Carey imagines a future that is both beautiful and terrifying. Readers will revel inEve’s timeless story of forbidden love and extraordinary adventure.
I read a blurb that states that Eve is a cross between The Hunger Games and The Handmaid's Tale, which naturally got me really excited. It's also, why I think I feel so let down. The book was compared with one epic dystopian novel and a more mature dystopian of high literary quality. I had extremely high expectations for Eve, and so I think I was disappointed that much more.
While this book surpasses Matched by Ally Condie, I had a similar reaction to Eve. It is such a great idea - there's so much you can do with a female character who's been taught that boys are evil and should be avoided at all costs and there's so much that can come out of women who are being raised solely to give birth to children. All the concepts are great, but in execution, Anna Carey falls a bit short.
I had some issues with how quickly the action in the novel went. Everything got kind of glossed over, things happened suddenly with little build up, and it was difficult to judge the emotional reactions of the characters. The way Eve finds out about her purpose in the government is unbelievable to me. One girl, who she seems to think is crazy, mentions that the school isn't preparing her to have a good job and suddenly Eve is questioning everything. That didn't make sense to me, because she's only known what she was taught, and one little question isn't going to make you re-examine your whole life. It's like I've been taught all my life that Pluto is a planet, I'm not going to stop believing that just because some people say, "Hey, you know what...it's not."
I had some issues trying to get a grasp on the exact state of the dystopian society that Eve was a part of. I get that men and women are meant to be raised separately and that women are meant to serve the purpose of making babies, but Eve ran away too quickly. I didn't get much of a sense for how the system operated. There's a king and then there are these, almost like reform schools for girls, and labor camps for boys - but what does everyone else do? What is the function? What is the society trying to achieve or repress? I didn't really get a great sense of that because in much of the book Eve is hanging out in deserted wilderness, only getting select information.
And that ending? If you've read the book, let me know what you thought. Because it kind of made me hate Eve (the character, not the book).
I'm willing to believe that some of the issues I had with this book will be resolved in the next two books - Eve is the beginning of a trilogy - but I haven't yet decided if I'll continue with the second book. The writing in this initial installment wasn't as rich as I would have hoped and it just didn't satisfy.
Eve - Anna Carey
Synopsis: Where do you go when nowhere is safe?
Sixteen years after a deadly virus wiped out most of Earth’s population, the world is a perilous place. Eighteen-year-old Eve has never been beyond the heavily guarded perimeter of her school, where she and two hundred other orphaned girls have been promised a future as the teachers and artists of the New America. But the night before graduation, Eve learns the shocking truth about her school’s real purpose—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 Arden, her former rival from school, and 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. In this epic new series, Anna Carey imagines a future that is both beautiful and terrifying. Readers will revel inEve’s timeless story of forbidden love and extraordinary adventure.
I read a blurb that states that Eve is a cross between The Hunger Games and The Handmaid's Tale, which naturally got me really excited. It's also, why I think I feel so let down. The book was compared with one epic dystopian novel and a more mature dystopian of high literary quality. I had extremely high expectations for Eve, and so I think I was disappointed that much more.
While this book surpasses Matched by Ally Condie, I had a similar reaction to Eve. It is such a great idea - there's so much you can do with a female character who's been taught that boys are evil and should be avoided at all costs and there's so much that can come out of women who are being raised solely to give birth to children. All the concepts are great, but in execution, Anna Carey falls a bit short.
I had some issues with how quickly the action in the novel went. Everything got kind of glossed over, things happened suddenly with little build up, and it was difficult to judge the emotional reactions of the characters. The way Eve finds out about her purpose in the government is unbelievable to me. One girl, who she seems to think is crazy, mentions that the school isn't preparing her to have a good job and suddenly Eve is questioning everything. That didn't make sense to me, because she's only known what she was taught, and one little question isn't going to make you re-examine your whole life. It's like I've been taught all my life that Pluto is a planet, I'm not going to stop believing that just because some people say, "Hey, you know what...it's not."
I had some issues trying to get a grasp on the exact state of the dystopian society that Eve was a part of. I get that men and women are meant to be raised separately and that women are meant to serve the purpose of making babies, but Eve ran away too quickly. I didn't get much of a sense for how the system operated. There's a king and then there are these, almost like reform schools for girls, and labor camps for boys - but what does everyone else do? What is the function? What is the society trying to achieve or repress? I didn't really get a great sense of that because in much of the book Eve is hanging out in deserted wilderness, only getting select information.
And that ending? If you've read the book, let me know what you thought. Because it kind of made me hate Eve (the character, not the book).
I'm willing to believe that some of the issues I had with this book will be resolved in the next two books - Eve is the beginning of a trilogy - but I haven't yet decided if I'll continue with the second book. The writing in this initial installment wasn't as rich as I would have hoped and it just didn't satisfy.
