Tori's Review: Eve by Anna Carey

Eve by Anna Carey

Series: Eve #1
Genre: Dystopia, Young Adult, Romance
Rating: ★★★★★
Pages: 336
Published by HarperTeen on October 4, 2011
Date Read: September 4, 2013
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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.

Parental Review: 

Language: Mild

Sexual Content: Mild (just kissing; talk of rape; the use of the word 'balls')

Violence: Moderate (a few people get stabbed; blood is mentioned and visualized; fighting)

Other: pregnancy; rape is mentioned; a deadly plague is mentioned

This book. This book. This book. This was seriously one of the best books I've read in a while. As you can probably tell from my reviews, I've been reading some pretty great books lately, but this book is just simply amazing. 

In Eve's world, young girls are taught to fear men--that men are savage beasts that will ultimately hurt them in the end. The young girls are brought up in schools and are taught certain skills for twelve years before graduating. They are promised a happy city, the City of Sand, where they can apply their newly learned set of skills, which is the opposite of what they got in the end. On the day before Eve's graduation she sees the school's badass Arden escape school. But Arden didn't escape before warning Eve of her terrifying future that consisted of involuntary breeding and pain.

After Eve learned the truth of the future, she escaped into the wild only to run into Arden again along with a wild boy named Caleb.

Okay, Tori, thanks for the three minutes of my life I'll never get back. 

Let's just take a moment and remember that I rated this book five stars. Honesty, I do feel like this book earned the five stars. I seriously had only one minor issue with this book and that was Eve's relationship with Caleb. Her entire life she'd been taught to hate boys and fear them, but merely two to three days after meeting Caleb, her first boy, she's already thinking about how handsome he is. Now I don't know if this is natural woman instinct or what, but... I don't think that they had instalove, but I did think that there was no reason for them to end up together other than the fact that Caleb was the sexy Stray that saved Eve from her terrifying future. That's the only reason I can think of.

That's really the only thing that I was unsure about regarding this book. Caleb and Eve's love felt forced by Carey, the author.

Other than that, I loved this book so much. I had so many emotions while reading this book. The first half or so is pretty mellow, where only a few major things were happening. But after about half the book, the plot picks up pace so fast that it's almost hard to keep up. Now don't get me wrong when I say that the first half is mellow. Mellow by Carey's standards is action-y by other authors' standards. Even if a lot of things weren't happening all at once, things were happening, and I actually cared about those things.

A lot of character development was going on during the non-action-y scenes, which I appreciated a lot. I have to admit that I did feel sympathetic for Eve. Her whole life she was taught to learn one thing and then her whole entire future is shattered before her eyes the night before she gets to behold her future.

I just really loved this book.

Tori, you said that already.

No, seriously. I just really loved this book, and I think that everyone should read it. I'm definitely going to be picking up the second book, Once, asap! I can't wait to see where Eve's journey takes her.