Synopses & Reviews
Reese and David don't remember what happened to them after a bird flew into their headlights on the Extraterrestrial Highway--not the resulting car accident and certainly not a bit of the 21 days of care at the military hospital in Nevada. It's a good thing, the doctors and colonels tell them, that they crashed on a military base, but they won't tell Reese and David what the extent of their injuries were, or how they were healed. They do tell them they're not going home, though, until they sign a confidentiality agreement.
When they get home, Reese can't help but find everything a little weird. Worldwide bird strikes resulting in plane crashes have grounded air travel, David won't talk to her, and she could swear she's seen her military doctors around the neighborhood. It's only when she meets Amber Grey that things in her life begin to really fall apart, and the mysteries of the bird strikes, the military, and her own treatment come together. Reese realizes that she must find out what they did to her in that hospital, but her search for the truth threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret.
What if we aren't alone in the universe? What if the alien is inside us?
Review
Praise for Adaptation:A CBC Best Children's Books of 2013 selectionA 2013 Top Ten Rainbow Project Book
"Absolutely compelling...the reader is tugged along, just as confused and naively hopeful as Reese herself. A sharp twist at the climax makes everything that happened before an even more satisfying puzzle to unravel."--Horn Book
Review
"Suspenseful, girl-powered, contemporary science fiction full of realistically diverse characters making realistic contemporary use of technology- plus hot kissing-make this book hard to resist."--VOYA
Review
"[
Adaptation] would do the X-Files proud..."
--Booklist
Review
"..Slot this on the shelf between Cory Doctorow's Little Brother and The X-Files."--Kirkus
Review
"Lo invokes a paranoid X-Files sensibility here, layering conspiracy atop conspiracy and balancing ambitious twists with nuanced relationships that are ultimately as important to the sci-fi plotting as they are to the character development." --BCCB
Synopsis
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.
Among them are Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David, who are in Arizona when the disaster occurs. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway in the middle of the Nevada night, 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 a bold contemporary science-fiction thriller from the acclaimed author of Ash.
About the Author
Malinda is the former managing editor of AfterEllen.com, and an award-winning journalist for her work in LGBT media. She studied X-Files fan communities when she was receiving her MA in Anthropology, which is where she got the inspiration for Adaptation. She now lives in Northern California with her partner and their dog. Ash was her first novel, and received many accolades and was a finalist for the Lambda Award, Norton Award, and Morris Award among others.