I read another book by Paul Young called The Shack. I loved it and I took a lot of flak from some 'friends' of mine who thought my take on the book was not entirely in keeping with my professed Christian worldview. In other words, they thought The Shack was terrible; I did not.

At any rate, I was excited when Eve was released on NetGalley and I eagerly request it, downloaded it, and started to read. And that's what I did: I started. I was able to get through less than half the book before I was plunged into a deep dark recess of boredom. And even what I read was just downright terrible.

I wish I had more to offer. The Shack it was not. Maybe at some point I'll give it another chance, but it's not likely.

1/5 Stars

Not very biblically based. I enjoyed his other novel, The Shack, but I have grown in maturity since then (or so I like to think) and this one didn't appeal to me.

Eve tells the story of a woman, Lilly, who has been trough a lot of suffering, who has a supernatural encounter that transforms her life. It is an imaginative retelling and interpretation of the the story we find in Genesis about the first temptation to sin and The Fall. In doing this it falls somewhere between fantasy and spirituality/theology. (And it is very important for people to treat it as a work of fiction. Often, when Christians get bent out of shape about this kind of thing, it's because they don't understand literature and fiction.)

I like Young's conception of sin as a disease that needs to be healed as opposed to a breaking of law that will be punished. God is portrayed as healer instead of judge.

Young is most known for his first book, The Shack, and like that one, this book is a re-imagining of God/the Trinity, and God's relationship with human beings. Both show that God as Love and Healer of humanity's brokenness. I must confess I liked The Shack a lot more than this one. But I will probably read this one again too.

I really enjoyed this book and the way the story unfolded. I picked it because I enjoyed The Shack. It gave me a lot to think about regarding the Garden of Eden and the story of Adam, Eve, and the fall. I appreciated the imagery and the metaphors.

My thanks to NetGalley and Howard Books for an eARC copy of this book to read and review.

It really broke my heart to give this one star. I really liked his book The Shack, 4.5 stars in fact. That book was completely the right book at the right time for the right reader. It was magical.

I was hoping the same thing would happen for this book. Not so much.

What I did like.

1) Eve was black. It makes sense that the mother of all people is black. If you look where human life originated, humans didn't start out looking Scandinavian. It worked.

2) The spotlight on the horrors of human trafficking. We need to seriously remember that slavery is alive and well in the world, even in America. It needs to be stopped. That this book highlights that evil is a huge positive in my book.

Now for what really brought this review to one star.

The re-write of Creation and the story of the Fall, pretending to be Biblical, but completely not being Biblical. With no notes, citations or bibliography. If you are going to challenge a SACRED TEXT, then you BETTER have some REALLY good back-up documentation. Granted, this was an ARC, maybe there was some documentation in the final copy.

I am ok with re-writes of Shakespeare, Jane Austen, classic works of literature, but NOT of a sacred text. Seriously, let's all change the Bible to fit how we think things should have gone, with no back-up. Why don't we just do the same with the Koran? We wouldn't do that, because it would be blasphemous and REALLY tick off those who value the Koran as a sacred text. It would be a violation. So why is it ok with the Bible? Open season on Christians and our belief structure and Holy Word? It's ok because the author professes to be a Christian? No. Just no.

If you need examples, these go into spoiler territory, be warned.

1) God told the angels to bow to Him AND man. Ummmm....not sure where it says that in the Bible. I must have missed that part.

2) Eve was tricked by the snake AND Adam to eat the apple, because Adam wanted to leave the garden and be powerful outside of it. He left immediately, Eve stayed. Again...not in my version of the Bible.

3) The Bride of Christ isn't the Church, it's a human being. I can't even.

If the non-Biblical re-write isn't enough, the WAY the book was written was just all OVER the place. We are in some magical land in=between our Earth and...someplace else that isn't defined. There is NO world development of this place. Complete confusion. We also have our plane of existence in flash backs and also the Big Bang and the Garden of Eden. A non-Biblical Garden of Eden.

We are in the non-defined place the longest and it is the most confusing one of the three settings. It HAD a sense, but the sense wasn't shared. The people all had titles starting with Capital Letters and some made sense, but they weren't really explained at ALL.

I'm not saying this is a horrible book, but it was bad for me, because I was looking for fiction that had a strong Christian and Biblical theme and background and this was the complete opposite for me. If you go into this knowing it is not following the Bible or the Bible isn't a sacred text for you, this isn't too bad. The world building is weak, but the plot is interesting. I was personally offended and can't give it more than one star, but that's just me. There are others who enjoyed it. I was just not one of them.

I personally couldn't get very far in to this one - it was just too confusing. I read the authors debut and found it much easier to read and connect to, but this one was just a little too ambiguous or maybe the apple fell too far from the tree. *Corny pun intended*
I wish I had better things to say about it, but it just wasn't a good fit for me and I quit somewhere in the first 20-30 pages.