READING: Eve by Anna Carey

Eve by Anna Carey

Publication date: October 4th, 2011
Published by: HarperTeen
Genre: YA Dystopian
Rating: 2,5/5

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.

There are two things that seriously went wrong in this book:

1. Major plot holes and

2. Major character fail

The story is placed in the future when, after a deadly virus has eradicated most of earth's population, girls and boys were snatched at age 5 , each for different purposes. Eve, while her whole family has been infected and ultimately died, she does not. Why some people survived and others didn't? We don't know. What was the virus, how did it work and what caused it? We don't know. Who is this big bad, the King? We don't know.

Anyway, Eve is brought up in all-girls school where apparently there are taught from a very young age to be terrified of men and never ever trust them because they say that it was them that brought the plague upon the populace. Now, I can only assume the writer means that those men were politicians and people in high places in general. Why only men? This is 2032. I am assuming that before the plague, Eve's world was the same as ours. So, weren't there any women in power?

Personally, I never figured out if Eve's world before the plague was indeed the same as ours. There are some culture references which prove that it is (songs, movies, books). Also at one point Eve is air quoting and I couldn't help but wonder how a little girl who was brought up in an overly conservative environment where simple leisure tasks are forbidden know about air quotes? I'm really sorry if you think that I'm picking the book apart but these are legit questions to which I never got answers. 

There is also the matter of topography. Story takes place in America obviously and Eve expresses her desire to go to Califia where she can live her life freely. I guess (notice the word "guess"? That's because I never really found out) that Califia is California. Why Carey does not say California then? Every other place she mentions is real, like San Francisco, Golden Gate Bridge, Arizona. It just seemed so weird and unecessary to me. When you're making up a whole new world after a terrible catastrophe, a world that you or anyone else has never lived in, you must have some basic structure and stick with it throughout the whole book, otherwise it just falls apart.

Eve. I didn't like Eve's character at all. Wherever she went chaos ensued because of her. They only thing left, was to hear her say "Oopsie!" after people were killed because she made a stupid mistake. She didn't seem to know what situation she was in half of the time, she didn't understand its seriousness, and ended up hurting a lot of people not because she was a bad person, but because she was an idiot.
Also dear Eve, when someone tried to rape you and later you are asked if you like that someone, your answer should NEVER EVER be "I don't know".

For a girl who was raised to hate boys, she locked lips with them no problem (I don't care how hot Caleb was). Speaking of, the last scene in the book with her and Caleb was the most obscene scene I have ever read. It rendered what had happened up until that point purposeless and frankly I was royally pissed about it.

Granted, it was a very fast and easy read, you didn't want to put it down. That was not nearly enough, though. I wish Carey had paid more attention to details and wrote a more wholesome story with a better lead character.