Publication: October 2nd 2012 by Feiwel & Friends
Source: Library Book
Goodreads Summary: 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?
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My Thoughts:
I think this book was creative and interesting but overall the writing was substandard in my opinion. I think this is the very first sci-fi book I've ever read so I have nothing to compare it to and therefore don't have much to comment about in that aspect of the book. I was satisfied with the explanations given about how Adam was created and the gene program, etc. but someone who is an avid sci-fi fan might not be. The idea of creating a perfect person and discovering how different gene patterns create different people is a very intriguing idea to me and kept me interested.
This book definitely didn't go the way I thought it would. I thought it would mostly focus on Eve creating a new human being--Adam. But that's actually a very small part of the book which really disappointed me. I think the subplots brought some interesting parts to the storyline but I do wish that there had been more of an emphasis on what I thought was the actual point of the book. After Adam is created, we barely get to see him before the book is over. I think the story would've been much more interesting if we had been able to get to know Adam and been able to see how Eve's choices affected who he was and how a lab-created person would interact with various situations/people, etc. We get some instances where these things happen near the ending of the book but if the plot had focused more on the actual creation of Adam, we would've been able to see more of it. I also found it difficult to understand what exactly had happened to Eve in the beginning of the book. It took quite a bit of piecing together to figure out (as I understand it) that she was walking on the street when a car ran over her. There's lots of implications but it's never said what actually happened.
Although I did like the characters and found them to be entertaining, they pretty much all had the same voice. The book flip-flops between different POVs, yet all of the characters have the same sense of humor and way of talking. Even Adam sounds the same apart from a few dry comments that you would expect from a lab-created person. I found Adam to be very entertaining in his naïve, child-like view of the world in some ways. I wish that there had been more character development of him and also of all the rest of the characters. We know that Solo is angry with Terra but we never know really what happened to make him hate her so much. Eve hates her mother but we don't really know why either besides her seeming to be neglected a bit. There were a lot of unanswered questions in this book. It seems like it should have a second book to it but I don't believe there is one nor do the authors plan to write one.
I was surprised when I got to the end of the book and saw that both of the authors were writers of the children's series of Animorphs. I read a few of them when I was in elementary school (mostly just the horse ones, I was obsessed with horses) and I remember liking them. Maybe the authors just got stuck in writing in the style of children's book and weren't able to amp up the writing for a young adult book. I'm not sure. But the book definitely could've been better written just purely grammatically let alone all of the loose ends left with the characters' backgrounds.
Likes: Easy, quick read. The idea was very interesting. The characters were all enjoyable.
Dislikes: All of the characters were basically the same. No character development. Actual pretense of the book (the creation of Adam) plays a very small part in the story. I also found the fact that every single person felt the need to gawk at Adam unrealistic. Everybody has different tastes and a seemingly "perfect" person will never seem attractive to everybody like how Adam is portrayed. Sure, lots of people might find him attractive but everybody he sees? Not so much methinks. The romance was too quick without enough interaction between the characters to support such a deep attachment in my opinion.
Overall:
Recommend? Yes. Because it was still enjoyable regardless of its lacking.
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