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The Guardian Of Eden (2011)

by Leslie DuBois(Favorite Author)

3.91 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction

publisher

Little Prince Publishing

review 1: Guardian of Eden is a story of familial love, revenge and murder. Having never known his incarcerated father and having to have lived with his addicted (and mostly absent mother), Garrett Anthony, the main character in this book is extremely intelligent and has had to be extremely responsible from a young age. He loves and takes care of his beautiful half-sister from infancy. Just when things seem to come together for Garrett, his life splits apart as he finds out his baby sister has been raped. He confronts the rapist, but cannot remember if he murders him. He really, really wanted to. There were actually a few suspects and that kept the story from being cliche.Sometimes, the main character's intelligence is written a little self importantly and the timeline sometimes com... morees under question (the grandparents are against an interracial relationship, the parents sent each other email?), but the story holds together well and is interesting.There is a happy ending and I would recommend this book as a YA read.
review 2: I really enjoyed this book and I thank the author for sharing it through the Library Thing Member's giveaway.This story appealed to the mother in me and just tugged at the my heart strings. The issues it dealt with such as incest, child abuse/neglect etc are such delicate subjects, but the author approached them with a tender hand and with sensitivity. Leslie DuBois did a fine job in making this story relatable.First of all, I don’t think the author’s/publisher’s description of the book does it justice. In fact, I found it quite misleading. I would have named this book “Keeping Secrets” or the “Past Revisited”. This is a book about how the past shaped and continued to shape a family’s future.In this book, we are introduced to Garrett Anthony, a young man who is struggling to find himself in addition to taking care of his sister Eden. Garrett is seventeen, but with all life experiences he is more like forty years old. Their mother Holly was a recovering substance abuser but she just lacked serious parental skills. Also, Holly was just a lost soul. She lacked the mental fortitude to deal with anything. So at a young age, Garrett began to parent himself and Eden. It was clear that Garrett had emotional and psychological issues because all that responsibility was traumatic. The two kids are forced to go to counseling by Child Protective Services case worker, which doesn’t seem to have a positive effect on Garrett.But he starts to find happiness with Madison McPhee, a young girl who works at his school’s newspaper. They were outsiders who seemed to connect, except for the fact that he is a black boy and she is a white daughter of a US senator. Garrett’s mother Holly meets a photographer Corbin, and finally they seem to have a normal family life. But then Garrett meets his biological father, who is in prison. Garrett starts learning about his father’s past as well as his mother’s past. The wall of secrets begins unraveling and a new tragedy is set into motion. The author did a great job developing the story and the characters, peeling layer after layer until we got to the heart of the issue plaguing this family. The story was sad but realistic. I wish Holly had developed more as a mother and had been strong enough to fight her demons in order to protect her children. I would love a follow-up novella to see how the family coped after the tragedy. less

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