Eve & Adam by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate

Evening Spiker is the 17 year old daughter of a billionaire genetic scientist with the access to private hospitals, hot young workers, and the latest in genetic developments; including the new virtual reality system that can be used to design any human you want. What Evening doesn't realise is that his isn't about improving lives any more, but about creating them.

Well, this book had an interesting concept - take a billionaire's daughter with mummy issues who is also genetically modified to heal fast, and give her some quite dodgy, but exciting technology to play around with after almost dying - its sounds like a great idea; but they didn't pull it off. Which was disappointing because Michael Grant is one of my favourite author's of all time, and I had never read any work from his wife: Katherine Applegate before, and the plot had so much potential.

The main protagonist in the book has me a bit confused - I'm completely on the fence with her. She fixates too much on her ever changing feelings for her mother and she can be down right horrible to people, yet I don't dislike her and she shows some compassion towards her best friend. She's an odd mix of cold and kind and even though her character develops, I'm not sure I like the way it develops. Also, did no else find it annoying how the daughter of a genetic scientist did not even seem bothered that she may have lost her leg for more than fifteen minutes? Or that the leg would still hurt even whilst still being on pain medicine? Honestly.

And then there was Solo, now Solo is described as this brilliantly, hot young eighteen year old, and I can't even picture him. I could also never fully understand why he hated Evening's mother so much, I now he believes she's responsible for his parent's deaths, but we see no hint of this actually from her and she's the one that takes him and gives him a job; yeah she's no angel but she's not this massive 'evil' he continues to describe either. I really didn't like the way he treated Evening at the start of the novel too 'I know she's checking me out. Fair enough, because I'm checking her out' - yes I know he think they're both doing it, but is he seriously not going to give that girl some privacy after a near death experience? I liked Solo a lot more towards the end of the book but I still couldn't find much depth to him as a character - it's all on the surface.

I actually quite like Evening's best friend in this book, Aislin, I think would have been a far more interesting character than anyone else in this book if she was given a little bit more depth; she only acts as a way to express how good and innocent Evening is by being her opposite - but she had potential. Aislin made me smile a few times no matter how corny her flirting was with Solo and some of her one liners were truly terrible, but it's all part of her charm and I think there are quite a few people out there who could really relate to her. One thing I didn't like was the slut shaming aimed at Aislin, but that came from the characters we were meant to perceive as 'bad', so I'm not sure how I feel about that to be honest.

And then there was Adam, who we meet for five minutes at the end despite being in the title, and most of the novel revolving around his creation, and he's dull. Yes, I understand he was alive for about ten minutes so he's not going to have much of a character left, but did they seriously make me read about him for over half the novel just for some guy whose easily influenced by everyone? And where did that romance come out of with Aislin? I'm glad she's not with her druggie boyfriend anymore, but this is the kind of romances you hate reading about in YA - the ones where they fall for each other in three seconds.

For me this book had no real depth and the authors wasted what could have been a great storyline on nothing, don't get me wrong I didn't hate it, it just left me with a 'meh' feeling. I enjoyed the turn the novel took towards the end when it was revealed to us who was really behind all the 'evil plans' but the ending fell short of any other expectations, especially Evening's 'revelation' about how much she loved her mum (how corny). The one upside to this book is that it's a quick read so if yo
u have nothing else better to do you might as well give it a shot.

Rating: 2/5 stars