Monday, January 7, 2013

Eve and Adam by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate

I got this as an Advanced Reader's Edition through Shelf Awareness from an imprint of MacMillan, Feiwel and Friends.  And I'm ashamed to admit, that once again, I was behind on my reading, and just now got to it, almost 3 months after it came out.  It was a good story, and really a pretty quick read.  The story kept me interested the whole time.  However it was a bit different than I expected.  Not in a bad way, just not quite the way I'd expected.  And while I'd kind of assumed it would be a stand alone novel, it does end at a place that is a good stopping place, at the end of the book it showed a page that say the story will continue in Adam and Eve.
Eve is our main character.  Her actual name is Evening.  Her friends call her E.V.  She doesn't like being called Eve.  The story begins with her being hit by a car.  She is rushed to a hospital, where soon her mother, who is the head of Spiker Biopharmaceuticals shows up to take her back to their research facility.  Supposedly it is because she trusts the doctors there better.  But soon Eve learns it is because she has somehow healed much better.  Her leg had been basically severed from her body.  Her arm crushed.  A boy named Solo lives at the facility.  His parents had once worked there, but died in a car crash.  Which he and Eve soon realize that it was the same car crash that killed her father as well.  Solo was taken in by Eve's mother, and lived at the facility.  Since he's been there, he wants to seek revenge for his parents' death.  He sees Eve's mother as an evil woman, using science to create things that aren't natural, stealing his parents ideas.  Now, the research facility has come up with all kinds of cures for diseases, so it is doing good work.  But there is some genetic research going on.  And Solo plans to blow the place wide open.  Until he meets Eve, and becomes her friend.  At that point he's not sure if he wants to hurt her.  While Eve is staying there to "heal" her mother puts gives her a project to play with.  To create the perfect boy using some software that they want tested to see if a normal person could use.  This is a highly advanced system.  Actually using the genes on the chromosomes to develop a person.  So Eve works on this, calls him Adam, makes him perfect looking, intelligence, personality.  All while trying to help out her friend Aislin.  Aislin has her own issues, a boyfriend who is dealing drugs and keeps getting either taken to jail, or in trouble with the drug suppliers.  To the point that Aislin even gets beat up by these guys.  So Eve makes her come stay at the facility to be safe.  While Aislin is there, they basically finish Adam, not all the way, but mostly.  And, Eve and Solo soon learn it isn't safe for them there.  Well, not after Solo does some spying into one of the scientist's computers, and gets caught.  But the footage he finds, well, it is shocking and disturbing.  When he shares it with Eve, and they realize their danger, they must decide whether to leave and leak the information to the public, or what to do.
I won't say anymore.  You need to read it yourself.  I kind of hoped for more of the science stuff, and not as much of the type of danger stuff.  But all in all it was a good story.