Review: Eternal Eden, hereby dubbed 'Ultimate Claptrap'.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 03 18, 2014
Where to start, where to start....First off, the plot. Girl meets boy. Girl hates boy for no reason. Girl meets boy 2. Girl hates him too, again for no reason. Reader thinks girl has issues. Boys pursue her anyway. Reader bangs head in frustration. Girl magically decides actually she was always madly in love with boy 2, even though she wasn't. Boy 2 says oh well, I'm going. Girl says in that case I'm going to kill myself. Boy 2 turns out to be such a stalker that he knows what she's doing and saves her by making her immortal. Boy 2 tells girl they can never be together or they will be killed. Boy 1 is totally forgotten for the pointless addition to the 'story' that he was, and boy 2 and girl don't have sex for 300 pages.So. A summary of my main issues with this book is:1) There is no plot, as evidenced above - NOTHING HAPPENED.2) There is zero characterisation.3) Nothing is explained.4) There is supposedly a fantasy story line buried in there but it takes up all of 2 pages of the book and then is promptly forgotten about - and oh yeah, it makes no sense.5) I PASSIONATELY HATED the 'heroine' for all her whining and self-deprecating, to the point where whenever she said how worthless and stupid she was, I was agreeing with her and thinking this would have been a much better book if boy 2 had just let her drown in the ocean at the beginning. I can't tell you how many times I was just 'screaming' (read the book and you'll know why I quoted that) 'SHUT UP!' at her in my head.6) While I started the book thinking William and Paul were both too nice for our protagonist, they both got so weird by the end that I hated them too.7) I hated every other wooden pointless character in the book.8) I was genuinely disturbed by what a stalker William was, by the back story to John (who even thinks such things up?) and by the way Bryn (btw I'm pretty sure that's a boy's name) so easily accepted it when William told her she was being trained to be one of an organisation who caused tsunamis and earthquakes and 'genocide' for the purpose of 'population control' all in the name of holy 'balance' after being cast out of Eden...which apparently is Earth, and yet there are 7 billion people still living there...?????????????????? (And oh yeah, honey, you said there were 6 billion - that's factually incorrect. Google should become your friend.)9) I found it intensely disturbing that they could tell who was a virgin and who wasn't by their eye colour - it was the creepiest idea and left me feeling a little emotionally violated, and yet it was never commented upon.10) The author had no grasp on the English language - random 'big' words were thrown in for no reason, and almost always used incorrectly - descriptions were unnecessarily overblown - others have mentioned the overuse of the word 'resolve' but I would like to note her use of words like 'barraged' and 'cornucopia' over and over again - and point out that, for instance, cornucopia means 'horn of plenty' and is a good thing, so you cannot have a 'cornucopia of disarray'...and it was utterly inappropriate to the circumstances in that scene anyway.11) William's meant to be 260 yet he acts like a 15-year-old boy half the time. And he's really stupid. And willing to die for the sake of one night of sex.12) I hate these books where they talk so much about the sex they're not having that it feels like there's more sex in there than a straight-up erotica book. How is this good for teenagers?Honestly, there were moments when I was reading this book and I just burst into manic laughter, often in public places, attracting stares.I have nothing more to say except...on GoodReads there are 7,757 ratings...and 3,000 of them are 4 and 5 stars!? Did we read the same book??? I'm so confused, it makes my head hurt :(If I read number 2, it will only be for comedic value. But I'm not sure I can bring myself to do it, even then.