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 a bold contemporary science-fiction thriller from the acclaimed author of Ash.

From School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up-Following their loss in the national debate championship, Reese Holloway and David Li are in the Phoenix airport awaiting their flight home to San Francisco when all flights across the U.S. are canceled due to a series of plane crashes caused by flocks of birds. While they are trying to drive home, their coach, Mr. Chapman, is shot and killed and the teens flee, only to crash in the middle of the Nevada desert. They awake nearly a month later and find themselves in a secret facility. Reese and David are told that they have received experimental medical treatments and that they must sign confidentiality agreements before they can return to their families. Reese discovers that she heals incredibly quickly and that she has strange dreams and sensory experiences. Given the location of their crash, their friend from back home wonders if the two may have been treated at Area 51. Before Reese can process any of this, she meets and finds herself falling in love with Amber Gray. This lesbian relationship seems to come out of the blue for both Reese and readers, but Amber's significance is later revealed. Lo pens a near future science-fiction thriller with a romance component. Although readers may find some plot points predictable, the alien-conspiracy theory element and the fast pacing ought to draw in many readers.-Eric Norton, McMillan Memorial Library, Wisconsin Rapids, WIα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

From Booklist

The birds seem driven to attack all over the continent. Communication shut-down. Martial law is declared. And high-school debate partners Reese and David see their tournament chaperon killed as they try to get back home to San Francisco. Reese has little memory of the subsequent car accident or of recovering in a strange hospital in the Nevada desert that makes her sign a nondisclosure agreement before her release. Within days, the stitches covering her body disappear, and Reese is left with fleeting recollections of a womblike cell and powerful sensations she has never before experienced. When she meets vivacious and beautiful Amber, her world spins even faster. What does it mean that she is attracted to a girl but still yearning for David? Soon Reese and David find themselves caught in a web of conspiracies that shatter her world but would do the X-Files proud. The pace of this sci-fi thriller picks up even further as secrets of universal proportions are revealed just before a cliff-hanger ending. Sequel? Affirmative. Grades 8-11. --Heather Booth