Review: Adaptation (Adaptation, #1) by Malinda Lo

Reese can’t remember anything from the time between the accident and the day she woke up almost a month later. She only knows one thing: She’s different now.

Across North America, flocks of birds hurl themselves into airplanes, causing at least a dozen to crash. Thousands of people die. Fearing terrorism, the United States government grounds all flights, and millions of travelers are stranded.

Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David are in Arizona when it happens. Everyone knows the world will never be the same. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway at night in the middle of Nevada, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won’t tell them what happened, where they are—or how they’ve been miraculously healed.

Things become even stranger when Reese returns home. San Francisco feels like a different place with police enforcing curfew, hazmat teams collecting dead birds, and a strange presence that seems to be following her. When Reese unexpectedly collides with the beautiful Amber Gray, her search for the truth is forced in an entirely new direction—and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret.

Adaptation is super weird, but quite awesome! It took awhile for me to get into it, but once I did, it was a strange and exciting ride! It all starts with an abnormal amount of plane crashes caused by birds. Something is causes mass amounts of geese, pigeons and other birds to fly straight into airplanes. Reese and her debate partner, David, are at the airport with their coach when the news hits. They decide to rent a car and drive home, but the roads are either blocked or congested due to evacuations. What in the world is going on? Soon the two teenagers are on their own after a carjacker shoots their coach, but they get into an accident. A month later, they wake up in a military hospital and they’ve healed much faster than they should have.

After the accident and secret medical facility–complete with a nondisclosure agreement–Adaptation slows down quite a bit. Reese and David are back home, and they both feel strange. Reese keeps having strange dreams and sometimes she swears she can hear what her mom is thinking. Is she going crazy, or did the doctors at the military hospital do more to her than they let on? Reese spends a lot of time worrying, but then she meets Amber, and the focus of the story shifts a bit.

While I did want to get on with the awesomely bizarre science stuff, and desperately wanted to know what happened to David and Reese, I loved the romance that was introduced in Adaptation. Reese was immediately drawn to Amber, but it isn’t until Amber kisses her that she realizes that she may like girls. It’s very confusing for Reese, since she’s never dated before and being gay has never crossed her mind. Plus she had a secret crush on David, and doesn’t feel comfortable with the bisexual label. Instead of trying to categorize herself, she just goes with it, and there is one seriously hot scene of her and Amber! I also loved how Reese’s mom gave her “the talk” after walking in on her and Amber. Safe sex for the win!

Back to the Sci-Fi stuff. The truth doesn’t come out until very close to the end and it was a doozy! I don’t want to give too much away, but I loved that twist. The government appears to be split on what’s going on, and there’s a whole mess of lies and truths that must be untangled. It did get a little confusing, since there’s a lot going on, but I’m definitely eager to learn more!

Adaptation was a great read! It’s certainly reinforcing my new found love for all things Science Fiction, and I loved that it featured LGBT characters, as well as a racially diverse cast. I think the San Francisco setting helped a lot, too. The story is slow in places, but I think it’s worth it, because there’s a lot of detail that becomes important later on. I need to know what happens next!

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