Eve(The Eve Trilogy 1)Author: Anna CareyPublisher: Harper Teen, 2011
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.
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.
My Review:
Eve is the smartest girl in school. Her favorite class topics are Dangers of Boys and Men, Manipulation and Heartache, and Domestic Enslavement. She has never met a boy or man, but girls are taught that men are manipulative, conniving, and dangerous creatures. Except for the King of The New America, he is the only one to be trusted and obeyed. Eve has won awards, is class valedictorian, and will soon graduate and go on to study a trade. Her life seems pretty much perfect considering the current situation of the world after the plague. That is, until a nagging doubt makes Eve investigate the Graduates building and ultimately discover the true horror of the life they planned for her. Eve knows she has to escape, but as she steps beyond the wall she realizes there is nothing and no one to protect her out there in the wild. And the things she has learned all her life might be all lies.
This was just such a cool book. First of all the way girls are used as a means to an end, taking away their choices was just infuriating. The idea that families, marriage and love are complications is just so wrong! I wanted Eve to find herself an army and bust everyone out! But Eve is very naïve thanks to her upbringing at the School, and sometimes her attitude made me dislike her. You want her to be this super cool chick against the bad guys in the awful post-apocalyptic world, but Eve is just not it. Thank goodness then for the humor, and there is a lot of it with all the funny interactions between Eve and the boys. I also got a bit teary eyes when she taught them to read, and taught them about love. Caleb was just dreamy with his pale green eyes, shoulder-length hair in dreadlocks, tan skin, and muscular chest. He lets Eve slowly fall in love with him, never pushing her in any way. I loved that. There is a lot of sacrifice and love and hope involved in this story, and that alone makes it a great story.
There were two things that kept nagging at me the whole time though, wrenching me out of the story-world. The plague supposedly started in 2015, and the current date is 2023. I just couldn’t believe that 8 years were long enough for things to be so deteriorated on the outside world and for people to forget terms like television, movies, or…balls. Oh and then Eve’s constant remembering of the past becomes quite annoying at times. I wanted to be in the present, not reminiscing about things every 5 seconds. The ending I don’t want to talk about. I’ll just say that the next book better have some great explanation for an ending like this, because otherwise I just don’t see the point in giving me love and hope and then wrenching it out. I’ll be looking out for the next book in the Eve trilogy!
*I received this ARC via Netgalley from the publisher*
Favorite Quotes:
Ever since I was small, I had been told there was a plan for me – a plan for all of us. Complete twelve years at School, then move across the compound and learn a trade for four years. Then onto the City of Sand, where life and freedom awaited us.
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In the wild there would be choice – however dangerous, however frightening.
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I didn’t know which was worse: to be killed by some brute animal or be taken off with a wild Neanderthal on horseback.
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The plague had killed far more females than males. As one of the few women in The New America, especially an educated, civilized woman, I’d always supposed I was ever man’s type.
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Caleb was two feet in front of me, eyes open, hands in mine. His face was so soft, so earnest and sweet that I forgot, if only for an instant, that we were different. That he was of the other sex, the one I had been warned about. The one I had spent my life fearing.
