Rattle The Stars

Book One in the Eve Series

Rating: Two out of Five Stars (really more like 1.5 but I like to round up)

It has taken me awhile to actually write this review, mainly because I have such a hate-hate relationship with this book. But even though it made me want to stab myself in the eyeball, my addiction to reading and need to give second chances will most likely end up with me reading the rest of the series. Painful, but probable.

In short, I am not a fan. It was half formed ideas smeared together with mediocre writing. It makes me sad to give bad reviews because I hate/loathe/want-to-punch book bashers who write nasty reviews but I cannot say I would recommended this book to anyone. I am going to speak my peace, which is MY opinion, and then suggest things I wish I would have seen.

Here are a few of my main concerns:

1.) I disliked the main character, Eve, which is a recipe for disaster. Especially near the end when she showed how utterly weak and thoughtless she is, I was about to throw my poor baby Kindle through the wall. Eve is inconsistent, selfish, and fickle.I kept hoping for Eve to become self sufficient, I wanted Carey to make us hate Eve for her naivete and then journey with her through self discovery and we would come to love her because we understood the growth she went through, but it never happened. It fell completely flat.

2.) Insta-love has never been so extreme. Eve is TERRIFIED of men and three chapters later she’s hiding and cuddling with tons of dudes? And then BAM! “Omg I love you ever so much random boy! You give me a feeling no one ever has before and I cannot live without you!” Well, considering that you are not a lesbian, no shit the first boy you meet gives you the butterflies you dumb twat! Carey made the progression between the extremes so sudden which equals 100% unbelievable. The good ole quote “If you stand for nothing you’ll fall for everything” works well here. If you refuse to give your character morals and ideas, she becomes sloppy and unrelatable which leads to poorly written plots. It seems as though Carey didn’t spend enough time building her heroine so she needed to toss in a boy to stir things up.

3.) The post-apocalyptic theme was stretched. A lot. Like Stretch Armstrong craziness. I couldn’t grasp the dramatic plague concept. It wasn’t developed enough at the beginning and although it gets cleared up more toward the middle of the book, by then I had already made up my mind about it being too far fetched. Once again, I think Carey had good bones of the world, but didn’t spend enough time creating the world that we could live in. It felt more like a 5th grade clay diagram displayed in a shoe box.

I refuse to give this book One Star purely based on the fact that I can see potential in the next books. Because while I disliked almost everything about this book, I have strange desire to read the second one. And reading other reviews about Eve, most people feel the same way. Crazy huh? I hope Eve stops being a self-centered hoe-face and gets royally slapped by reality. If Carey can build more on her foundation, create a more realistic world and characters, she won’t have to rely on the YA Writing 101 basics. Because if you have a great character and a real world, you won’t need insane love stories to make your book awesome.

Tags: Anna Carey, Dystopia, Eve, post apocolyptic, YA Review