Review Detail

This book just did not do it for me. I read it partly because I thought the cover was pretty and partly because I had heard both very positive things about the book and very negative things; I wanted to judge for myself. It was decent at first and then swiftly went downhill after the first 1/4th of the book; by the end of the book, I wanted to snatch Eve out of the novel and give her a good shake for being so selfish and reckless.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where the population was decimated, ‘Eve’ is the story of a young woman, Eve, who is about to graduate from an all-girls School where she received classical training as well as classes to teach her that men are evil and to be avoided. She is at the top of her class and admired by most of her classmates, minus a girl named Arden; she has also attracted the attention of the King of New America. Eve discovers that all of the training that she received at school is pointless since society has very different, insidious plans for the girls. Eve escapes the School and heads for Califia. She’s chased by government goons under orders from the King, eventually meets up with Arden (who also escaped the School), and is rescued by Caleb, one of many boys who escaped from a School for boys that was actually a labor camp. Along the journey, she must survive in the wilds of New America while learning that her future is not going to be nearly as easy or pleasant as she once thought.

All right, so I had quite a few issues with ‘Eve’. Mainly: the world set-up has serious issues, and I disliked the main character intensely. Oh, Eve. There’s a definite line between naïve and ridiculous, and Eve seems to happily skipped back and forth over that line throughout this book. For supposedly being a well-read and highly educated young girl, she makes a lot of silly moves that cannot merely be reasoned away by the fact that she’s an innocent to the dangerous world around her. She is illogical and puts herself and others in danger more than once. I never really felt sympathetic for her after she left her first set of friends behind to suffer at her old school, and she just continued to grate on my nerves as she usually let her new friends protect her or did something to bring trouble on them. On a more positive note, I did like that she was usually kind to others around her; I also liked that she tried to teach others to read. She had some good qualities, but I just felt that she was, in general, an annoying character.

One of my other major problems with this book was the reader is told that the world has basically ended and the population is teeny weeny…but they are wasting tons of time and effort to teach girls to sing, dance, play the piano, study classics and fear men. Why?? Especially when a major crux of the plot would be null and void if the girls were taught to embrace men and be happy to have as many children as possible. I’m trying not to give too much away, so I won’t say much more than that. There’s just not a lot of logic behind wasting so many resources on girls that are apparently never going to use the education that they’re given. New America’s School solution to the population problem seems contrived for the main reason of repulsing Eve and making her run away. Also, on points of things not making sense, Eve drops her life-long training of guy-hating quick enough when she latches eyes on Caleb. The romance just seemed to move too fast for it to have so much against it happening in the first place.

Although I’m not a huge fan of this book, there were some good points, like the writing style and the side characters. Carey’s style is engaging and kept me interested even when Eve herself was aggravating me. I really enjoyed the side characters, such as the boys who lived in the underground dugout, Arden, and Eve’s school friends. Arden was complex, dark, sarcastic, manipulative, snappy, difficult and bitter, and I was in love with her character. If the story had been told from her point of view, I think I might have liked it better. Caleb was a good male lead, if a little stiff and bland. Maybe in the next book, Eve will stay far away from the main action of the book, and Arden, Caleb and the rest of the boys will take over New America and live happily ever after. I'll probably never know, though; I'm not really planning on reading the next book.