Review: Eve and Adam

Authors: Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant
Release date: October 2nd 2012
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Hardcover, 304 pages


Eve and Adam by the husband-and-wife writing team Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant is a smartly plotted and solidly written book that, unfortunately, lacks both depth and substance. I could be wrong in assuming that it is a packaged book, but even if I am, I’m pretty confident it was written with no real passion for the story. Although I certainly can’t object to the quality of writing itself, the superficiality with which the idea was developed is disappointing to say the least.

Evening Spiker, daughter of the mighty and powerful geneticist Terra Spiker, gets hit by a car and barely survives. She is immediately transferred to her mother’s company, where she starts recovering at an alarming rate. While in Spiker Biotech, Eve meets a young man named Solo Plissken, supposedly her mother’s ward, who tells her she’s been genetically modified when she was a child, just like he was. Solo then gives her proof of her mother’s cruel genetic experiments, and Eve is forced to make some big moral decisions. In order to keep Eve entertained while she’s recovering in Spiker Biotech, her mother tasks her with creating a simulation of the perfect boy, which she eventually does. His name is Adam and he is being brought to life unbeknownst to Eve. His point of view is introduced in the second half of the book, and it completely destroys the narrative dynamics, already ruined by the unbalance between Eve’s and Solo’s perspectives.

The beginning was my favorite part of Eve and Adam. Surprisingly funny and dynamic, it raised my expectations to an unreasonable level and made what came later all the more disappointing. There was a certain spark in Eve that vanished without a trace as the story progressed, and the humor that made me laugh out loud a number of times during the opening scenes simply wasn’t there later on.

To make matters worse, the (disruptive) subplot involving Eve’s best friend Aislin and her drug-dealing boyfriend Maddox contributed absolutely nothing to the main plot and gave me the impression that Applegate and Grant included it with the sole purpose of increasing the number of pages. Even without Maddox, Aislin was clearly supposed to be the cool and unruly best friend, but I found her too be too irresponsible and tiresome for my taste. Instead of making Eve’s character more likable, she made her look like a pushover over and over again, until I stopped caring about either of them and focused entirely on Solo.

In short, Eve and Adam is a rather ambitious project, but one that lacks heart. My time would have been better spent reading something else, and although I plan to give Michael Grant’s solo projects a chance, I have no intention of reading any of the other books he co-authored with his wife.