Review: Little Eve by Catriona Ward

Little Eve

by Catriona Ward

Release Date: October 11, 2022 (First published July 26, 2018)

2022 Tor Nightfire

Kindle Edition; 271 Pages

ISBN: 978-1250812650

ASIN: B09NHKKJYN

Audiobook: B09WJDLYCD

Genre: Fiction / Horror / Historical

Source: Review copy from publisher

2.5 / 5 Stars

Summary

On the wind-battered isle of Altnaharra, off the wildest coast of Scotland, a clan prepares to bring about the end of the world and its imminent rebirth.

The Adder is coming and one of their number will inherit its powers. They all want the honor, but young Eve is willing to do anything for the distinction.

A reckoning beyond Eve’s imagination begins when Chief Inspector Black arrives to investigate a brutal murder and their sacred ceremony goes terribly wrong.

 

My Thoughts

Little Eve is the third book I've read by this author, and it's definitely my least favourite of the three.  While House on Needless Street and even Sundial had some intriguing moments, with some half-decent character development, this one left me shaking my head and wondering if it was even written by the same author.  Unfortunately, the story line was quite muddled, jumping from time line to time line with no apparent purpose that I could see, and for the life of me, I couldn't understand the huge importance the author put on Chief Inspector Black in this story.  What this book did show me is how much an author can develop their writing skills as this one is an earlier book, published before the aforementioned ones, and I hope she continued to write more in the vein of Needless Street rather than this one.

First of all, I really wanted to connect with the characters as I found them intriguing.  However, that never did happen as they were never developed in such a way the author made you care for them.  Even Eve, through whose eyes you witness a lot of the events, there was a distance that kept you from caring about what happened. When a couple of events happened, I should have been shuddering, but I was more upset over the horse than I was over the children and that is poor character development in my eyes, and even then I should have been in tears as I have an issue with any animal death in books, even humane ones. I think the author was trying so hard to be mysterious and to show how the children were in this 'cult', being descriptive without actually giving too much information to the reader, that it took away from the empathetic connection I wanted to feel.  

Which leads me to the story line, one that bounced around and didn't seem to have a clear focus.  I felt like the author was trying to show what it is like to be trapped in a situation, to understand they are trapped, the growing awareness and horror of their situation, and the risks and dangers of trying to be set free. And while that was definitely interesting, it just didn't work very well in this book, and what we got was a bit of a muddle, with characters that were one-dimensional at best, time lines that jumped around, and secondary characters that often served no purpose and felt like a cheap way to advance a story line because the author couldn't think of another way to do so, hence Inspector Black.  By the time I was three quarters of the way in, I felt like I had been reading the book forever.  That being said, I did like the atmospheric setting as I am always intrigued by old houses and I definitely love it when books are set in Scotland.  It's a shame the author didn't make use of some rather intriguing secondary story lines in this book to really up the horror element, such as Elizabeth's story, as I feel she lost the opportunity to really give her readers some scares and shocks.  

Verdict

Little Eve had promise, but unfortunately, fell flat for me. I wasn't a fan of the story line as it felt too underdeveloped for me to feel connected to the characters; I should have felt really chilled and unnerved by their situation, but I didn't really know what to think as the muddled story line kept pulling me back from any connection I would have made with them and left me wanting to just finish the book and get it over with.  And while the book was definitely atmospheric, with creepy moments, I don't feel like the author handled the themes in this book very well, using various forms of abuse to shock the reader, but not really addressing the issues and the horrors as many other authors do, something that left me feeling unsettled.  I read a lot of horror novels, but I think this author may not be for me.