Review: Eve by Anna Carey

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.

We all know that the dystopian genre is the one of the hottest new trends in YA; it started with The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins in 2009 and has been going strong ever since. We've seen everything from society divided into five factions in Veronica Roth's Divergent to a world where teen girls are paid to have children in Megan McCafferty's Bumped. I've read quite a few brilliant dystopian novels over the years, and to be quite honest, Eve did not measure up.

I'm not going to summarize this story, because I think the blurb is a good explanation of what happens and I don't want to spoil anything. What I will say, however, is this: as always, I need strong characters to keep my interest in a book. Eve was nothing of the sort. Yes, she was taught all her life that men are dangerous and should be feared, but her naiveté appeared to be more of a weakness than anything else. I waited for her character to grow as the story progressed, but she stayed much the same other than becoming a little more comfortable around males later on. Surprisingly enough, I wasn't very smitten with Eve's love interest, Caleb, either. I was actually much more curious about Arden, one of the secondary female characters in the story. If she had been the protagonist, I would've liked the novel so much more.

And now we come to my biggest issue with Eve--the ending. I'm not sure what the author was thinking, but I felt like the story came to an abrupt halt, and on top of that, ended on a rather sad note. The story was flowing fairly smoothly until the last few pages, and then it was almost as if the story went back to square one. I was disappointed to say the least.

Though nothing about Eve stood out to me, you may beg to differ. Feel free to give it a try (it's on NetGalley, which is how I got it--it's not supposed to release for a few more months though) and let me know what you think.

Rating: 3/5 stars