Review: Revealing Eden: Save the Pearls by Victoria Foyt

Publisher: Sand Dollar Press

Release Date: January 10, 2012

Number of Pages: 307

How I got this book: eARC from Netgalley

My rating: 4.5/5

Summary from Goodreads:

"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."

First, a big thank you to Netgalley and Sand Dollar for giving me the chance to read this book!

I really, really enjoyed this dystopian story. It was really interesting how, in the world that Foyt created, the "Pearls", or people with white skin are considered inferior and ugly, and the darker the skin the more desirable you are. Eden doesn't understand why skin color should matter...."she had waited for someone to see past her skin color and recognize the real Eden. After all, didn't everyone share the same DNA?" I loved the underlying theme of the importance of being "color blind." Eden thinks that Jamal, a Coal with a very high mate-rate, is her salvation. She finds out that he has only been using her to get information about her scientist father's experiments. It turns out that her salvation may be the man she would have least expected.

There were many things I liked...the Coals vs. Pearls idea was intriguing, the contrast of going from the underground world to the jungle was interesting, the idea of creating a new super species by mixing DNA of other animals with a human, and the frequent use of quotations from Emily Dickinson's work was really cool too. There were very few drawbacks for me...one was that I had a very hard time picturing Bramford after he was "changed" into a jaguar man. I couldn't help but picture him in a cartoon like way - this could be because my son is in love with the cartoon series "Thundercats". I can't fault the author for this though. Also, Eden does a whole lot of screaming in this book. Seriously, it seems like every page has her screaming. This made me think of her as kind of weak. And rather annoying. But, other than that, it was a fabulous book, and I am totally looking forward to the next in the series!

This review is also posted on Netgalley, Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.