Eve and Adam

by Katherine Applegate, Michael Grant

Overview

With Eve and Adam, authors Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant team up to create a thrilling story. 

 

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?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250034199
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	09/10/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	439,530
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.82(d)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Katherine Applegate is the author of many books for children and young adults, including the award-winning Home of the Brave. Her husband, Michael Grant, is the author of the BZRK series and the bestselling Gone series. Together they wrote the popular Animorphs series. They live in Northern California with their two children and numerous unmanageable pets.

Read an Excerpt

– 1 –

 

EVE

 

 

I am thinking of an apple when the streetcar hits and my leg severs and my ribs crumble and my arm is no longer an arm but something unrecognizable, wet and red.

An apple. It was in a vendor’s stall at the farmers’ market off Powell. I’d noticed it because it was so weirdly out of place, a defiant crimson McIntosh in an army of dull green Granny Smiths.

When you die—and I realize this as I hurtle through the air like a wounded bird—you should be thinking about love. If not love, at the very least you should be counting up your sins or wondering why you didn’t cross at the light.

But you should not be thinking about an apple.

I register the brakes screeching and the horrified cries before I hit the pavement. I listen as my bones splinter and shatter. It’s not an unpleasant sound, more delicate than I would have imagined. It reminds me of the bamboo wind chimes on our patio.

A thicket of legs encircles me. Between a bike messenger’s ropy calves I can just make out the 30% OFF TODAY ONLY sign at Lady Foot Locker.

I should be thinking about love right now—not apples, and certainly not a new pair of Nikes—and then I stop thinking altogether because I am too busy screaming.

*   *   *

I open my eyes and the light is blinding. I know I must be dead because in the movies there’s always a tunnel of brilliant light before someone croaks.

“Evening? Stay with us, girl. Evening? Cool name. Look at me, Evening. You’re in the hospital. Who should we call?”

The pain slams me down, and I realize I’m not dead after all, although I really wish I could be because maybe then I could breathe instead of scream.

“Evening? You go by Eve or Evening?”

Something white smeared in red hovers above me like a cloud at sunset. It pokes and prods and mutters. There’s another, then another. They are grim but determined, these clouds. They talk in fragments. Pieces, like I am in pieces. Vitals. Prep. Notify. Permission. Bad.

“Evening? Who should we call?”

“Check her phone. Who’s got her damn cell?”

“They couldn’t find it. Just her school ID.”

“What’s your mom’s name, hon? Or your dad’s?”

“My dad is dead,” I say, but it comes out in ear-splitting moans, a song I didn’t know I could sing. It’s funny, really, because I cannot remotely carry a tune. A C+ in Beginning Women’s Chorus—and that was totally a pity grade—but here I am, singing my heart out.

Dead would be so good right now. My dad and me, just us, not this.

OR 2’s ready. No time. Now now now.

I’m pinned flat like a lab specimen, and yet I’m moving, flying past the red and white clouds. I didn’t know I could fly. So many things I know this afternoon that I didn’t know this morning.

“Evening? Eve? Give me a name, hon.”

I try to go back to the morning, before I knew that clouds could talk, before I knew a stranger could retrieve the dripping stump of your own leg.

What do I do with it? he’d asked.

“My mother’s Terra Spiker,” I sing.

The clouds are silent for a moment, and then I fly from the room of bright light.

 

Copyright © 2012 by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate

Editorial Reviews

. . . the blend of action and romantic suspense will be welcoming . . .”―Booklist

“Observant, smart, and unencumbered by emotion, this is a tasty read that readers will devour in a flash.”―Publishers Weekly

“The husband and wife team behind the Animorphs series returns with the first installment of an entertaining saga that pits smart teens against high-tech evildoers and bionic skullduggery.”―Kirkus

“It’ll make 'em laugh. It’ll make 'em think. You may want to buy multiples.” ―School Library Journal

“Grant and Applegate portray a chilling brave new world of genetic technology, presenting fascinating speculative possibilities that are weighed against their moral implications." ―The Horn Book

From the Publisher

Eleventh-grader Evening Spiker (E.V. or Eve for short) has grown up with the wealth and privilege that go with being the only child of Terra Spiker, the stereotypically icy and no-nonsense CEO of Spiker Biopharmaceuticals. When Eve's leg is severed in an accident, the company clinic comes in handy, and when recovery gets to be a bore, there's the human simulation program to play with—Eve's mother asks her to "design the perfect boy" with it. A young orderly, Solo, is easy on the eyes, but he also prods Eve to acknowledge truths she'd rather ignore, like how fast her reattached leg is healing. Solo knows a lot about Spiker, more than a guy who pushes the coffee cart ought to. Why? The husband-and-wife team of Grant and Applegate (the Ani-morphs series) knows how to keep the questions and the action coming as they alternate (mostly) between Eve and Solo's perspectives. Observant, smart, and unencumbered by emotion, this is a tasty read that readers will devour in a flash. Lucky for them, there's a sequel planned. Ages 13–up. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

A rib-crushing, leg-severing accident is no big deal when your mom is a famous neurologist. Whisked from the hospital against doctor's orders, Evening Spiker finds herself convalescing at Spiker Biopharmaceuticals, the research facility headed by her cold, calculating mother, Terra. As she recovers, a bored Evening craves contact from the outside world, but Terra has the perfect distraction: Evening must test the lab's new genetic simulation program, picking and choosing DNA to create the perfect boy. Solo Plissken, the lab go-fer and now Evening's aide, has grown up at Spiker. Solo knows more than he ever lets on about the suspicious goings-on at the lab. He has been planning Spiker's demise for years, but he had not planned on the almost magnetic attraction he feels for the boss's daughter. Solo and Eve have more in common than they know. Soon sinister secrets are revealed, and the "simulation" leads to the creation of an actual flesh and blood boy, Adam. But if Adam is the perfect boy, why is Eve so attracted to Solo? Narrated by Evening and Solo in alternating chapters, Eve and Adam is a thrill ride of a book. Readers who do not stop to question the impossible science behind the plot will enjoy this fast-paced story. Unfortunately, the novel deteriorates in its closing chapters, with a climax involving stereotypical lab employees, an enormous steel redwood sculpture, and corny, stilted dialogue straight out of a Nickelodeon cartoon. Reviewer: Paula J. Gallagher

VOYA - Paula J. Gallagher

Gr 7 Up—The accident was horrific. Seventeen-year-old Evening Spiker should have lost her leg, if not her life. But mere hours after being rushed to the hospital, her mother, the über-powerful owner of Spiker Biopharmaceuticals, arranges for her to be transported to the SB Campus. Evening meets a mysterious boy named Solo, who fights his fascination with her even as he plots to destroy her mother, and she is given a fun assignment to do while she heals (at an unbelievably accelerated speed). It is to create the perfect guy-literally. Evening and Solo take turns narrating the story, along with Adam, her science project, and their voices ring absolutely true. Everything about this book is pitch-perfect: plot, characters, pace, everything. It is funny, thought-provoking, emotionally wrenching, romantic, and, above all, entertaining. It includes some violence, references to alcohol, drugs, and sex, but nothing overt. Ethical and moral questions abound and will spark spirited debate. It'll make 'em laugh. It'll make 'em think. You may want to buy multiples.Mara Alpert, Los Angeles Public Library

School Library Journal

The husband-wife team behind the Animorphs series returns with the first installment of an entertaining saga that pits smart teens against high-tech evildoers and bionic skullduggery. A run-in with a streetcar left Evening Spiker's body seriously mangled. Against medical advice, her widowed mother, Terra, insists on moving her from the hospital to Spiker Biopharmaceuticals, the cutting-edge biotech company she owns, renowned for its worldwide medical good works. Assisting Terra--though with an agenda of his own--is Solo Plissken, who takes more than a passing interest in Eve. Both teens feel a deep ambivalence toward Terra and Spiker Biopharm, though for different reasons, and beyond their mutual attraction, share a troubling, mysterious connection from the past. Eve's healing is strangely swift but leaves her bored and restless until Terra drops a project, billed as genetics education, in her lap: Design a virtual human being from scratch. With help from her feisty, reckless friend Aislin, Eve takes up the challenge. While she becomes increasingly mesmerized by her creation, Adam, Solo edges closer to achieving his own goals. The straightforward narration by Eve, Solo and Adam in compact, swift-moving prose, makes this a first-rate choice for reluctant readers while raising provocative questions about the nature of creation and perfection. An auspicious, thought-provoking series opener. (Science fiction/romance. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews