return to home  
Join   |  Gift   |  Member Login   |  Library Login
BookBrowse Mobile
Follow Us: 
    Reader reviews of Eve

Read what people think about Eve by Elissa Elliott, and write your own review.

Eve

Eve
A Novel of the First Woman
by Elissa Elliott
Published in USA Jan 2009,
432 pages.

Publication information




Critics' Opinion: 
Readers' Rating: 
About BookBrowse Rankings
Share: 
Buy This Book
Page 1 of 3 There are currently 15 reviews
for Eve
Select your view:
Order Reviews by:
Click Here To Write Your Own Review
Rated 3 of 5 of 5 by Gail
Eve
The concept of writing the story of Adam and Eve as fiction based on the biblical account is what intrigued me to read this book. However, it didn't meet my expectations. I feel it wasn't well written and could have been done better. I'm sure many readers would enjoy the book in spite of my observations.

Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by Nancy C. Cullinan
Book groups will love it
Eve is a wonderful and lovely story. Elissa Elliott has written about Eve in a way never imagined before.

Eve and her life burst from the pages, and I was "hooked" immediately. I flew through the pages, and the story ended much too soon. Now I'm beginning a second read -- this time much more slowly as I savor Elissa Elliott's beautiful language and storytelling.

I'm sure Book Groups will love this book. There is much to discuss, debate and imagine!

Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by Tricia
Spellbinding and full of emotion.
I've longed to know more about Eden myself. What was it like to be cast out? What was the garden? How did they survive afterward? Elissa Elliott's book tells you what might have been. I found it mesmerizing and once I picked it up, could not put it down. Each character was finely drawn and the plot, that of a early family surviving on their own and then thrown into a world of strange and exotic practices, practically leaped off the page.

Highly recommend. You won't walk away the same.

Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by Patricia
What a woman!
From the first paragraph of the prologue, Elissa Elliott’s novel Eve grabbed me and did not let me go until the end. Even then the story and the world of Eve, Adam, Cain, Abel, Naava, Aya, Dara, and Jarden haunted me for days to come. This is a beautiful and powerful first novel. Elliott’s choice of words and language are unique and gripping. This is the story we have always wondered about, and Elissa Elliott’s imagination has filled in the blanks and created an Eve who is a many sided woman, often loving and generous and often whiny and full of blame for others. It is Aya, the second daughter, who, because of her position in the family, is able to show us all of the other characters clearly.



I was reminded of The Poisonwood Bible with the multiple women’s viewpoint while reading this story. Elliott is a talented new novelist and I will watch for other novels from her in the future. In the meantime I will hold on to this novel to reread at my leisure.

Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by Gail
Ancient Tale Comes to Life
After Eden -- what? Congratulations to Elissa Elliott for her imaginative fleshing out of the Expulsion story. My book club would relish the characters of Eve and her daughters -- each speaking from her own unique perspective, age and ability.

Rated 3 of 5 of 5 by Lauran
Story of the first dysfunctional family
There were three main themes in Eve. First, it was a timeless story about a very dysfunctional family, with an emphasis on motherhood. The author’s telling of the complexities and emotions of motherhood I found touching. Second, while it was a story about struggling with faith emphasized not only by Eve’s desire to understand her expulsion from the Garden but also through the addition of the Mesopotamian’s and their worship of other and multiple Gods, I felt the story really spoke more to consequences. And third, accepting and making the best of one’s fate vs. living in the past, the latter of which cripples Eve.

The story was interesting and easy to read. However, I do not think the author painted Eve in a positive light. I suppose as a woman I expected to be inspired by Eve. Instead she annoyed me with her selfishness, naiveté, whininess and inability to move forward with her life until losing her most favorite child. I also struggled with the arrogance and selfishness of Naava. She felt more like a plot device to add drama and tension to the story than a person with any redeeming value. I loved the independence and spirit of Aya, her middle daughter, but still could not believe that she too could be as mean as the others (and in doing so set off a whole chain of events). In fact, except for Abel and Jacan, they were all fairly selfish and mean to each other and that grew tedious after awhile.
  1 2 3   next »

Become a Member
Golden Boy
Editor's Choice
  •  May 23 
  •  May 21 
  •  May 20 
And the Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini

And the Mountains Echoed Jacket

Khaled Hosseini has written a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations
Helga's Diary
Helga Weiss

Helga's Diary Jacket

The remarkable diary of a young girl who survived the Holocaust—appearing in English for the first time.
Fever
Mary Beth Keane

Fever Jacket

A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Click Here
   Most Recent Blog Entries
Movies Based on Books: Summer 2013 (May - August)
Jewish Young Adult Books That Are Not About The Holocaust
Books to Give This Mother's Day
rss  RSS   rss  subscribe
Recent Reader Reviews
Two Lives by Vikram Seth
Two Lives is a memoir written by international best-selling author, Vikram Seth. In this interesting and engaging book, Seth writes about his great... read more
Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Fowler
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight... read more
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on... read more
RSS RSS feed More...  
Most Viewed This Week
1. Sold
Patricia McCormick
2. Unbroken
Laura Hillenbrand
3. And the Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini
4. A Child Called It
Dave Pelzer
5. Tethered
Amy Mackinnon
More...
Book Club Recommendations
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
by Jeanette Winterson
Paperback (Mar/13)
Eleanor & Park
by Rainbow Rowell
Hardback (Feb/13)
The House Girl
by Tara Conklin
Paperback (Oct/13)
The Painted Girls
by Cathy Marie Buchanan
Hardback (Jan/13)
More...
First Impressions
Members read and review books often months before they're published. See what they think in First Impressions!
The Caretaker
by A .X. Ahmad
Four Stars            (May/13)
The Sisterhood
by Helen Bryan
Four Stars            (Apr/13)
Golden Boy
by Abigail Tarttelin
4.5 Stars            (May/13)
The Last Girl
by Jane Casey
Four Stars            (May/13)
More...
  Latest BookBrowse News
Judge rules unused Borders gift cards to be worthless (May 23 2013)
Borders owes nothing to holders of roughly $210.5 million of gift cards that had not been used by the time the bookstore chain shut down, a Manhattan federal... Full Story
rss RSS feed More...
 
BookBrowse Poll
Q: Which of these Summer movies based on books would you like to see? (Info on each movie here)
The Great Gatsby
Epic
Man of Steel
World War Z
The Lone Ranger
The Wolverine
R.I.P.D.
Percy Jackson
Paranoia
The Mortal Instruments
Select Any That Apply
Search: Title or Author
Free Newsletters
The Light Between Oceans

Online Book Club
More about
Five Days
Join the discussion!


Win This Book!
On Sal Mal Lane


"Piercingly intelligent and shatter-your-heart profound."

Enter To Win Now!

wordplay
Solve this clue:
"I Y N P O T Solution, Y P O T P"

and be entered
to win....
frame top
New Author
Interviews
Menna van Praag
Erica Brown
Helga Weiss
Kate Morton
frame bottom
HOME Book Submissions | Advertising | Library Subscriptions | Reviewing for BookBrowse | Contact Us