After Eden

by Helen Douglas

When mysterious new boy Ryan Westland shows up at her school Eden Anfield is intrigued. On the face of it, he's a typical American teenager. So how come he doesn't recognise pizza and hasn't heard of Hitler? What puzzles Eden most, however, is the interest he's taking in her.

As Eden falls in love with Ryan, she stumbles across a book in Ryan's bedroom - a biography of her best friend - written fifty years in the future. Unravelling Ryan's secret, she discovers he has one unbelievably important purpose ... and she might just have destroyed his only chance of success.

• ISBN10: 1408828693
• ISBN13: 9781408828694
• Publish Date: 7 November 2013 (first published 5 November 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
• Imprint: Bloomsbury Childrens Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 288
• Language: English

Reviews

[Angie]

After Eden was so much fun! Eden is just a normal girl, but then she meets Ryan. It's the cliched, new, mysterious, and kind of odd new boy meets normal girl tale. Or at least that's how things seemed at the start. Ryan is from the future, and he's actually there to stop Eden's best friend Connor from doing something that will ruin the future. Eden isn't suppose to know any of this, but after she figures it out, she's a huge help to the mission. Of course, the two have to fall in love and face danger, but that isn't until later.

I love when Sci-Fi books talk about the environment! Ryan and Eden first bond over both being vegetarians, although they chose this diet for very different reasons. In Ryan's home time, the world has been devastated: plants, animals, and humans are all dying out. He's very environmentally conscious because of this and I loved it! He also quotes Shakespeare! My kind of guy! I liked how most of After Eden's plot did actually focus on his mission of stopping Connor, instead of the romance taking over and ruining things. Ryan's mission is very important, so not becoming distracted is crucial. But I did adore the romance at the end, since it wasn't instalove. They had known each other for months before any feelings or kissing came about.

I just really, really enjoyed After Eden. It moves at a nice pace, and doesn't fall into too many YA tropes. I liked having someone other than the love interest be the center of the plot for once. Eden doesn't end up being anyone too special; she just happened to be the BFF of the target. I did find the ending a bit questionable. The last couple of chapters are a little cheesy and obvious, but I do love a happy ending. It all wraps up nicely, so the sequel, Chasing Stars, doesn't seem totally necessary to me. I'm definitely going to read it though!

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[Kelly]

http://www.divabooknerd.com/2013/12/after-eden-by-helen-douglas.html
After Eden was an interesting read. Eden is a typical teen who is trying to find her place in the world after the death of her parents. She has a small group of friends that don't seem all that close, and best friend Connor seems to want more from her than she is willing to give. Eden and Ryan meet by circumstance and are instantly attracted to one another, but Connor is determined to sulk, even though he's hasn't expressed any interest in Eden romantically, until Ryan arrives. This isn't a love triangle, as Eden has no interest in her best friend, but she's more than willing to play along as long as Ryan achieves his objective. Ryan isn't able to tell Eden anything due to something he refers to as Temporal Integrity. Honestly, it felt as though it was barely a brief explanation, only adding that a man known as The Cleaner will ensure that no trace is left of the mission.

The storyline had a Twilight feel to the flow and character development, which younger teen readers will enjoy. Mature young adult readers will be able to appreciate a fun, light read, as will teens who enjoy astronomy, but sadly the storyline lacks any real substance for late teens and adults. Purely for the young teen market, who'll enjoy Eden and Ryan's story.

[Ashley]

Nose Graze — Young Adult book reviews

I mostly liked After Eden. It didn't wow me, but I thought it was an enjoyable book. I really liked the time traveling part of the story. I'm actually a bit bummed that there wasn't more in the book about paradoxes, because I love those in time traveling books. I actually had a big paradox theory for the ending, but it didn't quite work out lol.

Most of the book reads more like a high school drama than an intensive sci-fi book. That might be bad if you want heavy sci-fi, but it might be good if you're looking for light sci-fi. There's a lot of "he likes her" "but she likes him" "but he's from another time period" type stuff. Relationship drama.

I don't think After Eden had insta-love, but I wasn't floored by the romance either. I never quite fell for it. I liked Ryan, and sometimes I liked Eden (more on that later), but I just wasn't completely sold on them together. Maybe it was a lack of chemistry. I don't think it was a terrible romance, but it wasn't incredible.

Okay let's talk about Eden. I think Eden was the weakest part of the story. The problem was that I thought Eden had a few moments where she was insanely stupid. It wasn't a start-to-finish type thing where she was ALWAYS stupid or ALWAYS annoying. It actually took a while for it to kick in. But then she had flashes of stupidity that really annoyed me. Here are a few examples:

#1 - When she first finds out that Ryan is from the future

She immediately wanted to know: what is the future like? Why is Ryan here? What is his mission? What is Eden like? And those questions are fair enough.. I'd want to know them too. But it's so obvious why Ryan couldn't tell her. He says:

The rules are clear. Do not communicate anything about the future to the inhabitants of the past. Knowing the future can change the future.

If Ryan were to tell Eden all about the future and their new technologies and what Eden is like, he's giving that knowledge to someone who shouldn't have it. Just having that knowledge could alter the course of the future. And yet, Eden didn't seem to understand that. Her response (several times) was:

"You don't trust me?"

"I can keep a secret."

"I don't want to hear any crap about Temporal Laws."

"You don't trust me enough to tell me something you don't have to."

IT'S NOT ABOUT TRUST!! Just the simple fact of knowing the future could affect things you can't even guess. It's not about whether or not he "likes" you or "trusts" you, so stop acting like that! And I hate how she basically says, "I don't want to hear any crap excuses about how it's against the law for you to tell me. You should tell me anyway." Seriously? She sounds like a spoiled brat.

#2 - When she promises she can keep a secret... and then she doesn't

This is spoilery, unfortunately. But OMG it aggravated me. The non-spoilery tl;dr version is: she learns the whole time traveling story, she swears on her mother's grave (not exactly, but basically) that she'll never tell anyone, they warn her to be EXTREMELY careful, she promises again, then she goes home and indirectly tells the first person she talks to. OH.MY.GOD. The stupidity... O_O

She convinces Ryan to tell her things, she basically knows the whole story, she knows there is a "cleaner" somewhere out there who has to clean up any "damages" caused by the time travel (including killing people who know too much)... and then she basically tells someone what she knows. To be fair, she doesn't outright say it, but she hints at it. And again, to be fair, anyone who didn't know the situation wouldn't have known what she was talking about, but she said it to the CLEANER, so obviously the cleaner did know, and then the cleaner knew that SHE knew, so then he had to kill her.

HOW COULD SHE BE THIS STUPID! When you're holding a big secret, you don't hint at anything to anyone! She basically told the cleaner "I'll never see Ryan again after Saturday because he's time traveling." The actual quote was:

"I can't explain why. But I know I'll never see him again after Saturday.

Vague, but still so obvious to anyone who knows the situation. My god. I wanted to smack her something fierce when she said that. Then when the guy replied with:

"Oh, Eden," he said sadly. "I really am sorry to hear you say that."

It was super obvious that he was the cleaner.

Another character I didn't like was Connor. To be honest, he and I got off on the wrong foot in the prologue when he basically groped Eden:

But all he knew was the feel of her warm breath on his neck, the thumping of his own heart, his hand as it moved around her waist and settled on her rear.
"Connor?" she said quietly.
He looked down, found her neck with his lips, and began kissing her—small light kisses.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Something I should have done long ago."
He kissed his way up her neck toward her lips. This was it. The moment he had dreamed of for the last two years.

If you're proclaiming your love to your best friend, you don't start that by touching her ass and kissing her neck. Just.. no O_O

But also, Connor was extremely immature and whiny. He got jealous so easily to the point where it pissed me off. I also hated how he had a crazy obsession with never driving with someone who's underage, but he had no problems with underage drinking. If you want to despise both—fine. It makes sense. But I think it's stupid to hate driving with someone who's a good driver (but yes they are underage), but be fine with going out and getting totally hammered when you're 15 years old. God.

I know I've complained about a lot in this review, but despite what you might be thinking, I didn't hate (or even really dislike) After Eden. In fact, it's not even until writing this review that I realized how strongly I felt about some of those points. But for the most part, I did enjoy the book! It's interesting, I was really curious to see how it ended, and it was really quick and easy to get through.

I'm not sure where the rest of the series is headed though. I was so sure it would end on a crazy paradox cliffhanger, but it didn't. The story gets really neatly wrapped up without any cliffhangers at all.

But After Eden is a good book to read if you mostly like contemporary high school dramas, but want a bit of a light sci-fi twist.