Eve and Adam by Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant
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?
3 1/2 stars
Thank you to NetGalley and Feiwel and Friends for this eARC! You can get a copy for yourself on October 2nd, 2012!
To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure at all how Eve and Adam was going to turn out. I was only lukewarm about the concept, but requested it in a slew of requests from Macmillan publishing (which owns F&F). I then proceeded to read the entire book in two days.
Actually, the entire first half of the book didn’t sell me too strongly. The apple thing–which is, in fact, in the beginning–doesn’t seem to have a point except for being thrown in there as an obvious allusion (she also loses a rib for no reason except for this, I’m guessing). It seemed to detract from the fact that Evening is being HIT by a VEHICLE and having her LEG RIPPED OFF. (Graphic imagery not included.)
I was, entirely through the book, lukewarm about the characters of Evening and Solo. I honestly did not understand why the for the life of me Evening and Solo were splitting the narrating, besides the fact that this is written by a male-female team. Evening does most of the narrating because even the authors seem to subconsciously know that this is Evening’s story and Solo is just kind of there. Evening’s mother is just kind of there and stereotypically evil, but PROPS for the character of Evening’s best friend. Now SHE was fun.
You know what? For the first half of the book I was just entirely lukewarm about everything.
And then the second half happened.
The action? Kicked up SEVERAL notches. All of the sudden we went from not much happening to EVERYTHING HAPPENING. Upon rereading the Goodreads synopsis, I can’t help be realize how much of the story isn’t in it. But you wouldn’t know it until the second half of the book.
Alright, I still wasn’t in love with the characters, but FINALLY the multiple points of view had purpose. The romance was particularly awkward and I didn’t find it that believable or real, but the way it’s handled was really sweet. I honestly have to be that vague because otherwise I’d reveal a MAJOR plot point, so … don’t hurt me. Trying to be non-spoiler here. 
The plot also never hit a point of entire believability with me, especially the plot twist at the end. The character in the plot twist was far too one-dimensional for the entire book, and there were absolutely no hints that this was coming. All of the sudden there’s just this HAHAHA, GOTCHA moment that I still honestly don’t believe.
All and all, the three and half star rating is perfect for me and this book. I liked it a lot, but I certainly didn’t love it. Though the end did a great deal to redeem the first half, I was just never really engaged with the characters or the plot. The action was great, and so was the subplots, but the overarching concepts just didn’t fit for me.
However, Kincaid brings Tom to life with fantastic ability. I feel his adolescent pain and really get to know how he ticks. Whereas sometimes I feel YA/middle grade books can present caricatures of adolescent life, Kincaid brought forward a REAL fourteen year old boy.
