Early Review - Eve and Adam by Grant/Applegate

After walking into an accident that nearly takes her life, Evening (Eve) Spiker, is spirited away to Spiker Biopharmaceuticals by her mother Terra "Terror" Spiker, the billionaire mogul, where she heals at an alarming rate. This should clue readers into the fact that there's something not normal about Eve or her ability to heal faster than anyone else.

While in recovery, Terra tasks Eve to design the perfect human by using a computer model. (I love the comparison to the 80's hit movie Weird Science). Eve soon becomes friendly with a boy named Solo Plissken who seems to have a few secrets of his own. Eve ends up creating the most beautiful boy imaginable after debating whether or not to choose female or male and everything in between.

Adam's very existence throws Eve for a loop yet she also finds that she can't find fault in her own work in creating Adam. Eve is basically a good person at heart yet she’s an emotional sponge when it comes to her characterization. She still suffers from the loss of her own father and sets out to do the best she can even without her mother around to guide her. She doesn’t have instantaneous romances with every boy she meets. In fact, she’s quite picky about the boys she chooses to go out with.

Solo Plissken (as in Snake Plissken from the movies Escape from New York/Los Angeles) is the second character in which we get a first-hand look at. Solo has had a rough life and ended up as ward to Terra Spiker after his parents were killed. Solo knows things about Spiker Biopharmaceuticals that could ruin the company if it were to get out. Solo firmly believes that Terra was responsible for killing his parents, and believes the only way to pay her back, is to expose the company to the media and government watch groups. When Solo meets Eve, it’s not love at first sight. It’s a gradual process that goes from being friendly to something else by the end of the book. I would have loved to read more about Solo instead of alternating chapters with Eve.

Another character we get to learn about is Eve’s best friend Aislin who I mentioned briefly above. To me, she was a waste of time and space and brought nothing to the table but grief and an addiction to a boyfriend who is a drug addict. Aislin doesn't run when Eve needs her the most. She stays with Eve when she's healing and trying to figure what to do next.

For readers looking for the parental aspect of the story, well, there’s Terra Spiker. In some ways she’s the perfect antithesis of the missing parental unit. She barely knows her own daughter and shuttered herself off after her husband died. She’s so driven that in today’s society she would be called a heartless bitch. Of course, most successful women are forced into roles they’re not normally trained for and end up being called power hungry trolls or worse. I find fault in her inability to tell Eve the truth about what really happened to her all those years ago. I think her appearance, although briefly, should have been more extensive.

Readers will look at Eve and Adam in many different ways. Whether it's about a mother who played God and actually saved her daughter from a life of pain and suffering is one of those. Yet, isn't pain and suffering a way of life for most humans? I digress since this is in part, science fiction. I could say that the authors are playing devil advocates when it comes to actual science and how they end up researching things that could be an improvement for humans, or stepping over the line to where nobody should like human cloning.
 
Eve and Adam alternates chapters between Eve and Solo’s POV and finally Adams once he wakes up to the realization that he is actually alive and not a computer model. The book, at 304 pages, was a really quick and easy read and left few, if any questions left over for the reader to figure out.

One of the best quotes of the book, which, yes, does have occasional humor as well.

"They made a baby boy. We named him Golem. He died because of a slight flaw in his genetic makeup."
"His sphincter was on his forehead."

This book was provided from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Expected publication: October 2nd 2012 by Feiwel & Friends

Title - Eve and Adam
Author(s) Michael Grant/Katherine Applegate
Publisher - Feiwel & Friends
Release date: October 2, 2012