Eve

by Anna Carey Narrated by Tavia Gilbert

Overview

The first book in Anna Carey's chilling Eve trilogy, Eve is perfect for fans of The Handmaiden's Tale.

After a deadly virus wiped out most of Earth's population, the world is a terrifying place. Eighteen-year-old Eve has grown up isolated from the rest of the destroyed world in an all-girls school. But it isn't until the night before her graduation that she discovers what her duties will be once she graduates.

To avoid the horrifying fate that awaits her, Eve flees the only home she's ever known. On the run, she encounters Caleb, a rough, rebellious boy living in the wild. Eve knows she shouldn't trust him, but he slowly wins her confidence...and her heart. He promises to protect her, but when soldiers begin hunting them, Eve must choose between true love and her life.

Eve is the first book in Anna Carey's trilogy, full of romance, adventure, sacrifice, all set in a near future that is both wonderfully strange, and chillingly familiar. *

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Dubious gender politics and questionable character choices hinder this dystopian romance from Carey (the Sloane Sisters series). A generation after a plague wiped out 98% of humanity, orphaned girls like Eve are raised in secluded schools, conditioned to fear the outside, distrust men, and look forward to a comfortable life in the City of Sand. When Eve discovers what’s actually intended for her, she flees the school. Teaming up with another refugee classmate, Eve meets Caleb, a teenage boy who alternately attracts and repels her. Together and separately, the three struggle through numerous dangers in the postapocalyptic landscape, while Eve and Caleb fall for one another. First in a trilogy, the book squanders most of its potential on a premise involving repopulation through forced breeding, a “Wendy and the Lost Boys” scenario, and the protagonist’s naïveté and ill-considered actions. With rare exceptions, men are portrayed either as brutes to be feared or feral children in need of a mother figure. Similarly, women who aren’t complicit in maintaining the status quo are all but reduced to broodmares or objects of lust. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up—Eve is orphaned by a devastating plague that killed 98 percent of the population. Twelve years later she is set to graduate from an all-girls orphanage, where the students have been promised bright futures in the careers of their choice. However, the day before graduation Eve discovers that they are actually going to be bound to beds, impregnated against their will, and forced endlessly to bear children in order to repopulate the country. This discovery is horrific indeed, or at least it would be if it made any sense. The plot and characters are undermined by huge logical holes in the dystopian world-building. The girls are taught to hate men through reinterpretations of classic literature, but why bother educating them at all when they are going to spend their lives as prisoners? When Eve (unsurprisingly) escapes, more discrepancies emerge. "The New America" is now ruled by a king who has a large army and runs the schools for orphan girls as well as work camps for orphan boys. But if depleted population is the problem, why are the orphan boys being mistreated and killed? Why separate the genders at all? When Eve and her former frenemy from the orphanage end up in a camp of feral boys and meet the muscular yet gentle Caleb, a predictable romance ensues. Carey's clever writing and imaginative storytelling have potential but ultimately cannot save this flawed novel.—Eliza Langhans, Hatfield Public Library, MA

Kirkus Reviews

Category romance meets YA dystopia in this poorly executed trilogy opener specializing in juvenile romance and adult violence.

Twelve years after a plague kills off 98 percent of the population, the United States is a monarchy. Girls are educated in boarding schools, reading literary novels and learning to paint and play the piano. Graduates, they're told, move on to learn a trade or profession. When the eponymous heroine discovers that the only trade they're headed for is broodmare (imprisoned in Spartan dorms, forcibly and repeatedly impregnated, bearing children in a royal repopulation scheme), she flees west, seeking the safe community of Califia. Finding assorted allies and villains along the way, Eve falls for manly, protective Caleb. (Gender roles are deeply regressive—next to Eve, Bella Swan is a radical feminist.) Conceptually childish, the plot never achieves credibility, in part because the style veers between awful and unintentionally funny. Unanswered questions abound: Why provide future broodmares with an elaborate great-books education? How can jeeps and trucks drive for days across deserts and up mountains without refueling or recharging? Isn't 12 years a short window for even the most efficient and dedicated evildoers to turn the U.S. into a full-blown dystopia?

Count this calculated effort to surf the wave of popular dystopian romance a wipeout.(Dystopian romance. 12 & up)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170005093
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/04/2011
Series:	Eve , #1
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	12 - 17 Years

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