Review: Eve

Eve by Anna Carey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Eve was good, not great, but good enough to keep me reading through the whole thing. The fact that school becomes a dangerous place for Eve in the beginning sets up a very interesting premise - women used as breeding fodder to repopulate the earth. Only it's not a natural breeding - they are implanted with embryos and then forced to spend the rest of their lives strapped to gurneys, giving birth every 9 months to God knows how many children. I wish there had been a bit more information about that, such as how many children they gave birth to at a time. There was mention of a "litter" and their stomachs being unnaturally bloated with children, but were there multiples in there? How many? Will we find out in the second installment of the series?

OK, here's my gripe: Why is it that every single YA book that comes out now is suddenly part of a series? Are YA authors unable to write a one-book story? Is it impossible for them to resolve a story in one volume? I honestly thought Eve was a stand-alone until I got to the end, at which there was no end, and saw the ad for Once in the back of the book. Really? I really thought this was going to be a stand-alone with a resolution at the end.

End of gripe. I guess it's the new "thing" today. Oh well.

***There are a few minor spoilers after this point***



Anyway. Eve was very well-written and despite my preference for a third-person omniscient narrator, I didn't mind so much that this was written from the main character's POV. There was enough detail that it didn't much matter that there was no other side to the whole story. I wish I could have heard from Caleb and Arden, although I guess that's just not part of the story.

Lark was an unnecessary character to introduce. She only served to highlight the ignorance of the girls in schools, which is exactly what Eve does, so why bother creating her only to kill her a few chapters later?

Why is Califia only women? That was an interesting plot twist, but I don't get it. I'm sure it will be revealed in book 2, but why should the reader have to wait for that when it could have just as easily been explained to Eve by any of the number of people that she met on the road?

I'm not sure I'll pick up Once, as I wasn't left as intrigued by this book as I had hoped. We'll have to see if I get around to it when I'm done with my other reading, I guess.

Pick up this book if you are interested in dystopian YA fiction, although be prepared to feel a little let down at the end.

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