Member Review

Eden is set in the 1950s, in White Rock, North Carolina, not far from the Cape Fear River. The book highlights many of the stereotypical issues of the 1950s South. Rowen Hart is a high school senior when his father kills himself and his mother has a nervous breakdown. As a young man raised in privilege he has no understanding of how the world works and has absolutely no clue how to think for himself. The only thing that he figures out in that first year is that he does not to travel the path his parents expected him to travel.

Eden Whitney is ten year old girl that has watched her uncle, her mother's brother, murder her father. She has a keen sense of right and wrong and is not afraid to speak her mind and do right by others. Soon after she testifies against her Uncle Franklin, the bank president, she runs away and is taken in by Rowen's family.

As we progress through Rowan's life from young man to married man, to adulthood, Eden is a catalyst of change in Rowen's life. She represents a side to the story that he is too afraid or blind to consider. Throughout Eden's life she makes people face that lies, the one's we tell ourselves, as well as, the one's we tell others, poison us and need to be atoned for.

The writing in the book is descriptive and the dialogue I feel moves the story along. However, the jumps from one part of Rowen's life to the other were unpredictable and abrupt. There was no time to process the scene I had just finished reading and the implications that it might have on the story as a whole, when boom the storyline had moved years down the line. This made the book feel disjointed as if a bunch of short stories with the same characters had been shoved together into a book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pronghorn for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.