Review: Not Quite Eden

Not Quite Eden by Dominique Kyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An odd book from start to finish.

Eve McGinty is, to put it bluntly, a fairly unpleasant teenager. She and the boy next door, Adam Quinn, have been at each others' throats since they were four years old. In the opening chapter Adam is drunk at a school dance, he asks Eve to dance with him and she agrees, only to lock him in a cupboard (after kicking him hard). What concerned me most is that Eve just walked away and left him there, knowing he couldn't get out - he could have been locked in that cupboard all weekend and she didn't care. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident, Eve is mean and frankly seems like a bit of a psychopath - for a sixteen year old girl not to realise the consequences of her actions seems a bit worrying.

Although we do find out later that Adam has also done one or two fairly appalling things to Eve, he mostly comes across as a dopey guy who is inexplicably in love with a girl who hates him and goes out of her way to humiliate him AND inflict bodily pain whenever she can.

Adam is the lead singer in a band, his best friend Kes is also in the band and dating Eve (goodness only knows why so many boys and men want to date her BTW) and when she finds out they need another guitarist she suggests her younger brother Jamie, confusingly Eve also has a female friend called Jaimie. So now Adam and Eve are hanging in the same crowd, although Eve takes it upon herself to heckle Adam at every opportunity - mean girl.

When Adam and the band get into trouble with drug dealers Eve becomes unwittingly involved and it seems as though only she can help them.

This reads as though it's a real story, by which I mean that there are characters and plots that don't really go anywhere. Eve has issues with her female friends that don't lead to any furtherance of the plot, she and Kes have heart-to-heart discussions about losing their virginity that don't really go anywhere, the local policeman, John Holt is also a religious man, but nothing develops from it. I liked this aspect of the book, the way in which the plot developments were potential dead ends, I would think "aha, X will happen" and then it didn't.

I also felt that one way or another the plot brushed up against a lot of "issues" (eg underage sex, drinking, drugs, arranged marriage etc) and it started to feel a bit like an after-school special - somewhat exacerbated by the list of help lines at the end of the book. It wouldn't surprise me if the book was written by a social worker.

But overall, I found that I intensely disliked Eve and found it highly surprising that she hadn't been beaten up by one of the numerous guys that she just used ruthlessly for their car/bike/van (she is a budding mechanic and loves motorbikes) and then dumped, obviously these were nice guys. I felt sorry for poor Adam who had to be drunk to pluck up the courage to ask her to dance, even though she would humiliate him each and every time, and I felt sorry for her Dad and younger brother. Maybe this is what teenage girls are like these days. On a positive note, Eve is loyal to her friends and has her own moral code (a small one, but she does have one), she is also amazingly resilient putting up with gender discrimination at work without complaining.

Finally, the book just ends abruptly, no plot resolution just ...

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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