Eve (Eve #1)

Had I written this review immediately after finishing Eve, it would have been filled with paragraphs of me gushing about Eve, the people she met along her journey of self-discovery, and an ending that had me on the verge of tears. Unfortunately, I waited a while after finishing Eve, and now that I am trying to call upon those warm, happy feelings I remember having while I read it, all I can remember are the worldbuilding issues and plot holes.

Sometimes, Eve was a lovely protagonist. I found her her will to persevere, despite numerous obstacles that were determined to see her fail, was admirable and her innocence was often quite endearing.

"He cleared his throat in mock seriousness. “My,” he crooned, his voice completely out of tune, “balls are sweating, my balls are sweating, I can’t keep my balls from sweating, noooo, nooo, noooo!”

I leaned in, noticing the folds at the corner of his eyes and the faint brown spots that covered the top of his cheekbones. “Why is that funny? What are ‘balls’? Like the ball of your foot?”

But most of the time, Eve was ruthlessly selfish. She barely thought twice about abandoning her best friends, even after learning the fate that awaited them, and the vast majority of her decisions served only to further her purposes, regardless of who got harmed in the way. Whether it was endangering people by taking advantage of their hospitality, or letting those around her jeopardize their lives in order to protect hers, Eve always did what was best for herself.

Fortunately, Eve is written so well that I was able to mostly ignore how much I disliked its protagonist. While the prose was certainly nothing to write home about, it was seriously engrossing; much to my chagrin, I couldn’t put Eve down! The writing had a certain addictive quality to it, and the pacing was spot-on. While I didn’t always appreciate Eve’s choices, they did always serve to keep me on the edge of my seat in suspense.

There was also a tenderness behind Eve, that came as a pleasant surprise. Considering its dystopian elements, I wasn’t expecting so many touching or heartbreaking moments to litter its pages. There was a moment where a young boy asked Eve what love was, which damn near brought me to tears:

"Love is just caring about someone very deeply. Feeling like that person matters to you, like your whole world would be sadder without them in it."

It was moments like this that reminded me of the disturbing nature lurking underneath Eve’s fluffy exterior. Can you imagine a world where a child needs to have the concept of love explained to him?

Alas, now that it has been brought up, it’s time to discuss it: the world-building. To be completely honest, while reading Eve, I really had only very minor issues concerning a couple plot holes. Occasionally I would wonder how a child living with someone who had the plague could have avoided contracting it for themselves, or how governing officials were so quick to plan their future by organizing these schools during the midst of a pandemic, but I was able to mostly shrug off these fleeting concerns. After taking a few days to think over things though, less and less about the world-building made sense.

How did America fall so far, in such a short period of time, where they would be willing to revoke democracy and basic human rights? How am I expected to believe that in just sixteen years, society has morphed into the worst version of itself, where it encourages child slavery and cattle-like breeding techniques? Why bother educating these orphan girls if they were never going to be used for their intelligence? Why bother instilling an unhealthy dose of fear towards the opposite sex? What was the point if they were going to be used to bear children until they died? And if the end goal is to increase the population, why are only orphan children being forced into carrying children? What about all of those privileged women living in the desert city? Finally, and maybe most importantly, what’s going on with the rest of the world? We only heard about America’s struggles – are they the only ones affected by this Plague, or did it spread worldwide?

So while I truly enjoyed reading Eve, it’s these questions that I’m left with when I think back on my experience.

Eve really fell flat for me. I’d heard so many mixed reviews going in so I was pretty wary, but I tried not to let it color my view while I was reading. Whether they did or they didn’t, the fact is Eve didn’t end up being my favorite. I’ll still read the sequel, but it may take me a lot longer to get to it.

Let’s do this list-style so I’m not writing a lengthy negative review. Thos make me saddy.

Dislikes:
1. Characters: none of them really drew me in and made me care about them, so everything that happened just felt really passive to me.
2. The world: I didn’t dislike it, but again, it didn’t draw me in.
3. Eve: Not only did I not connect with her, but she kind of drove me nuts sometimes. She wasn’t really whiny and she was mindful of others – most of the time. There’s one part where she gets a whole mess of people in trouble and that made me royally pissed off because she was only thinking of herself when she did it.
4. The relationship: It just really wasn’t working for me. It felt a bit rushed, but not because she trusted him too quickly like a lot of other people said. For me, it just felt as if the undying “love” they felt for each other kind of came on a little quick.
The Nutshell: Though I’ll be reading the sequel, Eve was a slow read that never really grabbed my attention and just left me feeling luke-warm.

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.