Escaping Eleven is a young adult dystopian romance by author Jerri Chisholm. Escaping Eleven is Jerri’s debut novel, and I really enjoyed it. I was excited to learn that it is going to be the first book in a series. Book two is called Unraveling Eleven and it is currently slated to be released in September of 2021! Escaping Eleven had a unique world set up. In this dystopian novel the climate of earth has made the world uninhabitable, and the remaining survivors of this area of the world are forced underground to live. Underground their new society is divided into a caste like system, where the floor that you live on determines your job, and your status within the compound. The higher to the top floor you are, the more upper class you are considered- quite literally.

Our main character, Eve lives on the lower floors of Compound Eleven, which puts her more in the laborer/have not category of this society. But Eve is scrappy, and may seem a little closed off an prickly to most outsiders looking in, but I appreciated her skeptical prickly nature. I loved Eve! I think she felt real and fleshed. She brought the story to life in my opinion. She is not living in an easy world by any means, and her outward personality likely helps her with her fights. In the lower floors there is something that felt like a fight club to me, and Eve is one of the best fighters! That is until a mysterious boy shows up and whoops her butt.

I loved that the lover interest, Wren, started off by fighting her. Because though Wren is a great fighter, he is a real sweetheart. His compassionate soul helped to counterbalance out Eve’s harsh exterior I thought. I really enjoyed the two of them. And I liked the story of Escaping Eleven. I thought this novel has a really strong premise, and a great start and a awesome ending. I can’t wait for the next book. That being said, the story did drag a bit in the middle for me. But with the ending of escaping Eleven and I am really hopeful that the next book will have more action and movement in it. I would also like to learn a bit more about the world in the next installment. Overall, this was a solid start to a series. I am interested in continuing on and seeing what happens with Eve, Wren and with this world overall. I think this was a really good debut from author Jerri Chisholm. I can’t wait to read more from her!