Series: Eve #1
Author: Anna Carey
Genre: YA Dystopian
Publisher: HarperTeen
Synopsis:
The year is 2032, sixteen years after a deadly virus—and the vaccine intended to protect against it—wiped out most of the earth’s population. The night before eighteen-year-old Eve’s graduation from her all-girls school she discovers what really happens to new graduates, 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 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.
Have you ever walked around in a bookstore and then just the way the name is displayed on a certain book grabs your attention? Well that is what happened to me with Eve. I love the cover, it just looks so awesome and it just shows you that this story is going to be guy-in-death-metal-band hardcore. And it was. A dystopian novel focuses on the depressing side of things. So if you do not want to feel a wave of despair crawling over you when reading a book, I suggest you steer clear. I on the other hand, love dystopian novels and depression they create when reading. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few happy moments present but then it gets sucker punched by a scene that isn’t all unicorns and rainbows.
It starts off where we meet Eve, the main character, at one of the government schools of the New America. It is called this because a deadly plague wiped out most of the world population and they are trying to rebuild. These schools are only for girls though and they teach these girls that all men are bad. That men just want to use and abuse you, that they are liars and deceitful people and only want sex from women. These girls, all of them orphans, believe their teachers because it is all they know. They teach them that there is no such thing as love between a man and a woman, the women love but the men use their love to their advantage. Hectic right? This was honestly the weirdest part for me of the book. They even used Romeo and Juliette, not as the tragic love story that it is known for, but as a symbol of how men can manipulate women and isolate them from their families and that is why Juliette ended up killing herself. Not because the love of her life was dead, but because she was all alone and no one to turn to. By then I was in such a WTF mode that I had to finish this book pronto because I needed Eve to figure out that this was not the truth, that it was lies that a pathological liar would be proud of.
Things take a turn on the night before graduation. She comes across Arden, a girl in her grade, who is trying to escape. She succeeds, but before she leaves she tells Eve that the school isn’t what she thinks it is. That the girls don’t graduate to go to the Graduates Buliding to become doctors, artists, lawyers, etc, but instead something more sinister and disgusting. Eve of course refuses to believe this, as any girl of eighteen would, but during the course of the night she becomes restless and decides to go investigate. What Arden said turned out to be true and she hatches a plan to escape, until a teacher catches her. Luckily for her the teacher helps her escape.
She meets up with Arden after a few days and that is when they meet Caleb. He saves Eve from a bear attack. She, of course after all her schooling, doesn’t trust him at all even though he saved her. According to this silly girl he must have an ulterior motive. She voices that she knows he saved her just to have sex with her. This is where I literally hit myself in the face with the book. I mean honestly, so what if he wants to have sex with you (he didn’t though), the dude has dreadlocks, the body of a god and the prettiest eyes ever. If he wants to do the hanky-panky, you nod your head and just go with the flow *cough cough*. In books is the only place where this can happen so I thought it is a valid observation.
Caleb takes them to where he lives but promises to help them get to Califia, a safe haven for outsiders, as soon as they are able to. Eve also finds out that the King of the New America is personally searching for her so they need to stay hidden at all times and during that time they develop a very new sort of love, since none of them have actually experienced it before so it was quite cute.
Eve’s character starts of as very naive and infuriating and most of the time I just wanted to shake her and knock some sense into her, but at the same time I understood why she was like this. Her education gave her very few other choices. Luckily during the story she starts to develop as her own person and gets her own beliefs. I loved this story because you can actually vividly see the change in the character and it was so refreshing. Then there’s Caleb who was completely drool worthy but he did act a little childish some of the times and when that occurred bad things tended to happen to Eve.
Anna Carey has a way of sucking you right into her story. Some of the times I actually felt like I was Eve. Not many authors can do that for me and I enjoy it immensely to get completely lost in a book. This is definitely recommended. The ending will leave you with a “huh????” feeling though. Stay tuned for my review on the sequel, Once coming soon.
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