The Book Barbies: [Review] Revealing Eden by Victoria Foyt

Title: Revealing Eden
Author: Victoria Foyt
Published: January 10th 2012 by Sand Dollar Press Inc.
Rating: ★★★
Goodreads summary:

Eden Newman must mate before her 18th birthday in six months or she'll be left outside to die in a burning world. But who will pick up her mate-option when she's cursed with white skin and a tragically low mate-rate of 15%? In a post-apocalyptic, totalitarian, underground world where class and beauty are defined by resistance to an overheated environment, Eden's coloring brands her as a member of the lowest class, a weak and ugly Pearl. If only she can mate with a dark-skinned Coal from the ruling class, she'll be safe. Just maybe one Coal sees the Real Eden and will be her salvation her co-worker Jamal has begun secretly dating her. But when Eden unwittingly compromises her father's secret biological experiment, she finds herself in the eye of a storm and thrown into the last area of rainforest, a strange and dangerous land. Eden must fight to save her father, who may be humanity's last hope, while standing up to a powerful beast-man she believes is her enemy, despite her overwhelming attraction. Eden must change to survive but only if she can redefine her ideas of beauty and of love, along with a little help from her "adopted aunt" Emily Dickinson.

Emma's thoughts:

I really hoped for more for this story. It has such a promising story, and the idea was great, but Eden was so annoying! I get that most MC's are in the beginning of a dystopian novel, but she never changed! I mean, yes, Eden did say something about looking at the world differently, but she was still annoying. I could not stand her, really I just couldn't. I want to grab her, shake her, and smack some sense into that girl!

She's all high and mighty - which is ironic because her skin colour puts her virtually at the bottom of the ladder - and thinks she knows everything! When she says over and over again that Bramford is bad, I'm really not sure who she's trying to convince. Her dad, me, or herself? She wants to go home, but HELLO, it's been destroyed, she has no friends to go back to, and how would she be safer with the people that obviously hate her skin colour as opposed to friendly natives that worship her rescuer?!

So there's my little rant about the MC, but really, I loved the whole idea of the book. The fact that in Eden's world, the darker your skin, the more authority you apparently have. I mean, this brings racism onto a whole new level.

My history class was actually discussing this the other day. So apparently the European colonies bombarded pretty much the entire African continent because they thought they were infinitely superior to the dark skinned people that obviously didn't understand them. The European had guns and machinery and so they went 'HA. We are CLEARLY more advanced and smarter than you, so therefore you can be our slaves and clean our floors!'

But in Revealing Eden, Victoria Foyt explores this idea of sun flares. I'm sure we all have that friend with really pale skin that's permanently red in summer. So that's Eden and every other white person in the novel. But the difference is that they supposedly die from these flares. So in this case, you have the darker skinned people laughing, 'Karma's a BITCH honey! We can survive the sun but YOU can't, so bow down to us!'

In comes scary, half-man, half-jaguar, Bramford. He's arrogant, bossy, and a megalomaniac. Did I mention half-jaguar?!? I had the hardest time trying to imagine this jaguar/man creature... I just, don't understand...! But other than his utterly confusing appearances, I really liked him. He was smart, confident, totally crush-worthy, and way too good for Eden! I mean, really, even after he makes a clearly correct statement, she still has the nerve to question him. He could seriously do better.

Bramford's secret is really a touching one. I cannot wait to see where it leads with the next novels!

Rating: 3 stars~ Not a fan of the MC, but everything else was great.