Hopeless Hope

EDEN by Andrea Kleine begins with two sisters, Hope and Eden, kidnapped as teenagers. As adults, Hope finds out the man who assaulted them is up for parole. She then searches for Eden, who became a stranger almost immediately after they were found. Everything is told through Hope's POV, but she flashes back and forth between the kidnapping, her past and her current search.

At first, Eden appears to be the damaged one, but eventually Hope's life seems so much worse. At one point, when her father essentially told her to get over it, I wondered why she didn't just kill herself. Everyone seemed so focused on Eden's well-being in the beginning, and supportive of her Bohemian lifestyle later on, while Hope was left to twist in the wind for the rest of her life.

However, there is the possibility Hope is an unreliable narrator and her take on events could be extremely inaccurate. Upon closer scrutiny, Hope continues to play the victim in her interactions with pretty much everyone in her life (i.e., all her problems are the result of someone else's actions, she takes zero personal responsibility), yet she criticizes Eden for not dealing with what happened to them. Hope tends to be self-destructive, but she judges Eden for her life choices.

The end of the novel is extremely anti-climactic, and any sympathy or concern I had for Hope had dissipated into apathy. I really wish readers would have been given Eden's POV as well. As the novel stands, I did read the story in one sitting, and I never lost interest in the unraveling of events. I just find it ironic Hope seems so hopeless. Eden, in contrast, seems to have found her namesake.

As always,
AstraDaemon