Eve & Adam by Michael Grant & Katherine Applegate
And now a little Science Fiction - and all about genes! May I introduce: Eve & Adam (in German Eve & Adam, in French Projet Adam) by Michael Grant and Katherine Applegate! Age 14 (girls [& boys, depends]), 2012.
Imagine you had a program which could create your heart's desire, your absolute dream boyfriend on a screen. You could make him as you like, beautiful, ugly, tall, small, nice, touchy, intelligent – well, not that intelligent. Evening (Eve, or E.V.) Spencer has this chance. After she literally ran in a train, she gets the once-in-a-life opportunity to fool around with Project Adam. But then, suddenly, this perfect man stands before her and says "Hi".
The first half of this book is really good, very funny and easy to read. The second half on the other hand...It's as if something missing, as if the authors deleted too many chapters and now it doesn't really make sense any more. It's sad, because this main idea has so much potential.
You need more space to actually show Adam's mistakes, how Eve f.e. falls in love with her creation, how she's drawn to him, but then how she realises that he actually isn't the person she dreamed about. That she could never fall in love with him, because he might be next to perfect, but that his perfection goes the wrong way. Humans aren't capable of knowing their own hearts well enough to really create something that'd be a perfect fit. And even if they managed, the person would be the perfect fit for a very short time. Because humans develop. Which is one of the reasons why 50% of all marriages are divorced.
Eve needs time to realise all of this, to realise that Adam isn't the one for her. She needs to add up all the tiny details, maybe ask herself why she feels nothing for him – not really. Maybe she should even feel bad. If I'd been in her skin and had created my perfect fit and realised that this was a failure… I'd probably ask myself what was wrong with me. That I wasn't capable of falling in love with someone whom I had created for that purpose. After all of that, Eve'd need time to look at Solo differently. She found him annoying before. Now she has to realise that he's actually quite handy… and how she than falls in love with him.
Unfortunately, Eve simply meets Adam, feels something's off and then simply blinks and falls for Solo. She actually arrives at the conclusion through leaving out everything that leads up to it. Therefore her decision doesn't make any sense.
Eve herself is refreshingly self-ironic. Her BF is nice as well, she always seems to be secretly laughing at something. And Solo is a brooding type who takes everything too seriously. Well. I don't exactly understand how they all fit in this constellation. The sassy with the wining, the spontaneous with the coward.
In brief:
I give this book 1 stars, one for the ideas and half a star for characters, the other half for style, minus one for content. But I give the SoGH.