Review: Eve by Anna Carey

Title: Eve by Anna Carey
Publisher: Harper Teen
Release Date: July 13th, 2012
Genres: Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic, Romance, Action, Horror
Medium: Hardcover, Bought

I began reading Eve with slight doubt. It wasn't that popular, yet was still relatively new, which seemed unusual to me. The cover was also very boring and uninteresting, and lacking that extra umpf. It looked very much like every other dystopian novel you see everyday on the shelves. Yet, the synopsis still interested me, so I took a chance and decided to pick it up. Let me say, I was hooked from chapter one. The plot is new, fresh, and interesting. It features the usual dystopian background a disease-ride place now called New America. The only difference is that the new government is taking the girls to schools to supposedly "learn" while the boys go to labor camps. The girls are being treated as little more than sows as they are sent to a permanent maternity ward where they are forced to repopulate the new world. Eve escapes along with Arden and another girl and soon they come across a troop of boys who have also escaped from their prisons. They meet Caleb and go in search of a refugee camp in on the coast. This plot keeps you hooked from chapter to chapter, playing with your senses as you face the complications of hunger, thirst, trust, being in hiding, sickness, all while heading to a camp you know very little about. It also has the underlying message that knowledge can sometimes be dangerous.

The writing was great, yet lacking in certain realms. Simple, yet interesting, making it easy to fly right through, because ultimately, it's impossible not to. It is action-packed and filled with fighting and running, as they fight to escape the king if New America. The writing has very little thinking, though. It is almost completely action scenes and dialogue (very little dialogue!) and no transition, emotions, or thoughts from the characters. There is no thinking behind their actions. The characters also evolve very little. If you likes stories like this, completely actions with little emotional reaction from your characters, then you will enjoy this novel. I however, wish their could have been more response from the characters, and less reacting like robots.

The characters (as you read above) have very little evolvement. But besides this, they are interesting. Eve, a simple, sometimes annoying girl, is often kind of dumb. I didn't like her character as much as I would have liked to. Arden was more like my type of character: a real bad-butt if you know what I mean. Caleb was also a different type of character. He was the strong, living-off-the-land type, protective with a soft side. He was a super cool character to get to read from, whereas Eve was one dimensional, slightly boring, and had the dumb-girl effect in me. Her character could have been developed a bit better.

Taking all of this into account, Eve was the beginning of a great trilogy. Although I had a few qualms with the first book in this series, I still enjoyed it thoroughly. It was well thought out, creative, and thought-provoking about what decisions you would make if you were in the situation. It was interesting and a completely different world, keeping romance alive and other factors in play, while not overshadowing the action-packed dystopian world. A great story. 3.5 stars.