Review: Eve & Adam by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate

by Kay | Jan 16, 2015 | Reviews | 0 comments

And girl created boy…

In the beginning, there was an apple—

And then there was a car crash, a horrible injury, and a hospital. But before Evening Spiker’s head clears a strange boy named Solo is rushing her to her mother’s research facility. There, under the best care available, Eve is left alone to heal.

Just when Eve thinks she will die—not from her injuries, but from boredom—her mother gives her a special project: Create the perfect boy.

Using an amazingly detailed simulation, Eve starts building a boy from the ground up. Eve is creating Adam. And he will be just perfect... won’t he?

I was quite apprehensive about reading to read Eve & Adam! I adored Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant’s Animorphs series growing up, as well as her Everworld series (click to read my rave of their books). They were some of the authors responsible for making me such a voracious reader. So… picking up one of their novels as an adult? That made me nervous! What if it was terrible??

I need not have worried – it was fab. Eve & Adam reminded me of why I loved their work as a kid. Grant and Applegate have a dark but optimistic view of the world. They never worried about making good people do bad things – or letting bad people be responsible for good. It’s a hard message to get across but they manage every time. Eve & Adam had that message in spades and, just as I did when I was 7, I loved reading about the conflict it created.

Eve & Adam explores ethics in a way only science fiction can. Are we allowed to play God? When can its benefits outweigh the suffering caused? Always? Sometimes? Never when it comes to humans, but Always when it comes to animals? What if it is your mother you have to judge? What if she is both God and the devil? Which of these roles is defines her more? Grant and Applegate don’t preach the answers to these questions, rather they let the characters explore both sides for themselves. It was really well done.

That being said, the book did feel a bit rushed. There is a lot crammed into this book  – hell, we don’t even meet Adam until the last quarter of the novel! And since timing was an issue, there weren’t as many “character moments” as I would have liked. While I enjoyed the narrators, I didn’t care too much about any of them. And when a romantic triangle popped its head out towards the last part of the book? I didn’t really care either way. I would have, I’m sure, had the book been spread out in a duology. Unfortunately, the lack of “feels” brought my rating down by half a star…

Bottom line? If you like thought-provoking YA novels or enjoy science fiction of any kind, you’ll enjoy Eve & Adam.