REVIEW: Eve by Anna Carey

Product Description

Where do you go when nowhere is safe?
Sixteen years after a deadly virus wiped out most of Earth’s population, the world is a perilous place. Eighteen-year-old Eve has never been beyond the heavily guarded perimeter of her school, where she and two hundred other orphaned girls have been promised a future as the teachers and artists of the New America. But the night before graduation, Eve learns the shocking truth about her school’s real purpose—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 Arden, her former rival from school, and 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.
In this epic new series, Anna Carey imagines a future that is both beautiful and terrifying. Readers will revel in Eve’s timeless story of forbidden love and extraordinary adventure.

About the Author

Anna Carey graduated from New York University and has an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College. She lives in Los Angeles.

 Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (October 4, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0062048503
• ISBN-13: 978-0062048509

SOURCE:  PUBLISHER

MY THOUGHTS
ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT

Eve is set in a dystopian future where the majority of the population has died off in through a viral infection and New America is now run by a despotic man.  The title character of Eve is charm and grace with a beautiful covering and is in a convent type school where she is taught that boys are evil and is lead to believe that she will be part of the country's rebuilding as a teacher.  When she uncovers the horrible truth about what awaits her when she graduates, she flees and meets up with her rival Arden who explains the truth of the school.  Together, they find other young survivors from the apocalypse and  uncover additional horrors as they try to make it to the safety of another part of the country.   Eve becomes attracted and aligns herself with Caleb, a survivor himself, and together they piece together a future- or what they hope might become a future.

Character development is the key to this story from being just another dystopian tale.  I was really moved by Eve and her will to survive and fight for her life.  It could have easily been just another book in a massively populated genre, but I immediately connected with Eve and Caleb and cheered them on even though I was left hanging by the time they reached their supposed promised land.  That didn't quite turn out the way they planned it, but I can't wait for the next in this series to find out exactly what happens next.  So the setting of this book is quite familiar to those of you who have read Wither by Lauren DeStefano or The Handmaiden's Tale by Margaret Atwood, but Carey gets the characters perfectly developed and for me, this made all the difference between being good and excelling.