A review by treehuggeranonymous
Children of Eden by Joey Graceffa

2.0

I hate reading books that exist to set up the sequel and in the end that's what this was. It's not a stand alone story. There are various threads and hints of what’s underneath Eden that are brought up solely to set up future books. At first I thought it was poor editing, but I think - most likely - that the author wrote one book and the publisher decided that based on the author's YouTube fame they could drag it out into three books in exactly the same way that YA film adaptations are dragged out across multiple movies.
On top of this flaw, it's just not very well written. The plot is generic. The ending is just horrendously contrived - basically just handwaves a natural disaster in order to have the big dystopian YA ‘things are not as the seem moment’ and save a protagonist who I was kinda over by that point and wouldn't have been sad to see go. It was really painful to read and came out of nowhere - like seriously, throw in something every now and then so we know that it's prone to these events. The characters are bland and not well described. The relationships go from naught to sixty in just two days, but the protagonist recalls everything like it happened over months (we can add bad editing to the list of flaws).
The world of Eden was an ambitious one to take on as a first novel, and unfortunately I don't think the author was quite able to pull it off. There was definitely potential, but just too many flaws to make this an enjoyable read.

EDIT: I just googled the publisher and they boast a 4 mth turnaround, so I think it’s fair to say that at least 50% of my problems with this book are editorial in nature.