Eve Book Review by ChristineMM

Title: Eve
Author: Anna Carey

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Dystopian Literature

Publication: Harper Collins, October 2011



My Star Rating: 3 stars out of 5: It’s Okay

Summary Statement: More of a Love Story Than Dystopian Action Tale - Boring Main Character - Will Be a Turn-off to Male Readers



Eve is a marketed as a dystopian genre young adult fiction book which the publisher states is a “planned trilogy” and they claim this book to be “The Hunger Games meets The Handmaid’s Tale”. Nearly everyone in America had died of plague starting in the year 2015 which was when Eve was five years old.



My interest in the book is that I have been reading and enjoying various dystopian literature stories including books in the young adult genre. I am a homeschooling mother of two boys, one who is studying dystopian literature at the high school level now.



The most important thing about a work of fiction is that the reader care about the character. Being able to write and do whatever writing magic is necessary to get the reader invested in that character is not easy. My biggest complaint about Eve the book is that I didn’t quite get that feeling about the main character. My feelings about her are “she’s okay”.



Eve has just completed what could be considered high school, she is about to begin her adult life. Having grown up isolated and having never even seen a real live male and having learned only via books such as classical literature she is naïve and has no general cultural literacy, not even knowing what a computer, TV or a movie is (things that apparently are no longer used after the plague yet were not taught as part of history classes). I didn’t dislike Eve, it is just that I really didn’t like her much; she’s pretty boring as far as characters go and sometimes she does pretty stupid things that show while she has a good book based education she has little street smarts or common sense. The only time I admired her was when she was teaching young children to read.



The book starts off with a bang of action relating to the discovery that the world that Eve thought was a new utopia is actually a very flawed place (a dystopia) where the governing body in power has been lying to the girl orphans who have grown up in a boarding school environment. The story quickly turns from being centered on dystopian action and adventure to being primarily a story of first love. The writing of the love relationship is good and it seems to be the author’s strong point. However having the strength of the story in the infatuation and the kissing and snuggling puts the book in a category of a “girlie book” and it is nowhere near what The Hunger Games is with its main character as a female but is loved by both teen girls and boys (and also has found fans in adults).



The tension issue about the girls in this society having been raised thinking all men are evil sex-craving beings who are abusive brutes will be off-putting to male readers. The attempted rape scene and having been sold off by one young male to another male to be put into the sex trade put this over the top as sealing the deal that male teens will most likely hate this dystopian tale. (Who wants to read a book where their gender is attacked and seen as so vile?) Switching the focus to infatuation, love, and positive and negative sexual experiences derails the book from being primarily a dystopian ACTION story and makes it a LOVE STORY in a dystopian setting. Books for teen girls are fine; I’m just mentioning this as writing such a story automatically rules out half the population who may otherwise have been consumers of this book. Also girls who like dystopian literature and action tales who don’t like typical girly YA books focusing on love and relationships may not like this dystopian tale either.



The ending stinks and I think it was a big mistake to have such a negative ending. It is a gamble when an author chooses not to have the fairy tale perfect ending. I understand the author and the production company Alloy Entertainment plans this to be a trilogy but I feel that each book in a trilogy should be a complete tale. It should not have ended on a cliff-hanger with an ending that readers hate so readers feel forced to read the next book just because we want there to be a different outcome at some point in time in the future (will Carey make us wait to the end of book three for that satisfaction?). To me, an ideal situation a first novel in a trilogy would be such a good story that we cannot help but want to continue reading more of when the second and third book are released.



The book was never boring to me as a female adult reader but I was just left with an empty feeling and didn’t really care much for Eve as a person so I was not fully invested in her survival so I didn’t have that “cheering her on” feeling that I should have had. It’s a fast easy read typical of YA novels and I couldn’t help but wonder maybe Eve the book would have made a better movie instead of the opposite situation where the book comes first and is so great but the subsequent movie can’t quite measure up. Having just recently read The Hunger Games trilogy which I absolutely loved and Uglies which I liked, I was let down by Carey’s Eve.



I rate the book 3 stars = “It’s Okay”.


Disclaimer: I received an advance reader's copy of the book from Amazon Vine for the purpose of reviewing it on Amazon.com. I was not paid to write the review or to blog it. For my blog's full disclosure statement see the link near the top of my blog's sidebar.