Eve of Man
Author: Giovanna and Tom Fletcher
Publisher: Michael Joseph
Pages: 400
Rating: ♥♥♥
Synopsis from goodreads:
“All her life Eve has been kept away from the opposite sex. Kept from the truth of her past.
But at sixteen it’s time for Eve to face her destiny. Three potential males have been selected for her. The future of humanity is in her hands. She’s always accepted her fate.
Until she meets Bram.
Eve wants control over her life. She wants freedom.
But how do you choose between love and the future of the human race?”
♥
My initial thoughts about this book were that it had an interesting concept, but it’s going to be a typical girl falls in love with boy and vice versa, the fact that they’re not supposed to be together drawing them ever closer to each other, but it actually didn’t turn out that way. This book was dripping in dystopia where humans have, of course, ruined the world but this time Mother Nature hits back, and there hasn’t been a female born for fifty years, until Eve comes along.
The book is split between Eve and Bram’s points of view; Eve kept safely away as the only one that can save all of humanity, and Bram, a worker to keep her safe and well. I love the obvious split in writing style between the two characters, which is sometimes not as evident when just the one person writes the book. I found Bram’s passages a bit witty at times which was in keeping with his character whereas Eve took on a more serious and erratic tone as her world crumbles around her. Things take a dark turn throughout the book and these two are thrown into a world of chaos.
It’s a dystopian with an interesting concept but I wasn’t gripped by the book throughout, it felt more like I was watching the ride rather than actually on it. Not a very dramatic book that evokes much emotion. It’s a book that’s great if you fancy a change of genre that’s quick and easy to read, but not if you’re looking for something more in depth with a bit of magic to it (for which to me, it lacked) then maybe try something else. But I loved the cover though – very in keeping with the mood of the book!
Now it’s onto a few quick spoilers – yes, the spoiler section is back! I can’t resist a few gifs which display so beautifully my reactions to the book I’m reading so look away now if you don’t want to be spoiled!
It’s not the typical romance that you think between Bram and Eve, mainly because Eve starts falling for her one and only friend, Holly, (which also happens to be a hologram) because she is in fact, controlled by Bram (still with me?) so Eve is actually falling for Bram who is pretending to be Holly and Eve can tell between the three people that control Holly, that it’s Bram she is falling for.
They end up setting off a chain of events by Eve and Bram (who is actually Holly in this moment) just about kissing which throws everyone into a panic because Eve can’t fall for any old guy.
So Eve kisses Holly – her hologram friend. Who is actually being commandeered by Bram at the time.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think I could fall for someone based on just their eyes and character, and the fact that they are a fake hologram being controlled by someone else but hey, each to their own.
This book focuses heavily on the fact that Eve is the only reproductively active female on the planet, and my god are they obsessed with her eggs! It’s like she’s the only chicken on a barren farm and they desperately need her eggs like they need air to breathe. She gets to choose between three guys which one she wants to, basically, procreate with. One throws up at seeing a sixteen year old female (fail), the other tries to kill her (maybe don’t text that one back for another date), and the other she never wants to meet because the first two went so badly, so Eve opts for just having a bit of his sperm to fertilise her eggs and procreate the good old-fashioned scientific way!
Fair to say, none of this works out and Eve ends up escaping and running off to be with Bram. I have no idea how this will play out, and the ending didn’t really pull me in enough to really want to find out what happens in the sequel so I’m not sure if I want to carry on with this trilogy.
It was a quick YA dystopian to read and had some interesting concepts and provoked some thoughts about humanity and just what would happen if suddenly no females were born, but the characters were just a little bit too mellow to draw me into their lives so I think I’m happy to leave it at that – Bram and Eve got away together.
“I guess reality is just the world with which we are presented.”
-Giovanna and Tom Fletcher, Eve of Man
the bookworm dreamer 