The characters are all quite unlikable, and its really quite a depressing book. Some of it feels like it captures the way teenagers talk and think quite well, but in other bits I just found it a bit tedious to read. ( )

What a brilliant idea - call a book Apples and name the two main characters Adam and Eve. What this promises is sure to be a theme on temptations and that's exactly what we get. Apples is essentially a hard hitting take on Adam and Eve from the book of Genesis - the story of children growing up and going out into the big wide world with all of its wicked ways to lure them into temptation. And do the kids in this book stray or what! Adam has OCD and spends his spare time reading porn magazines and pleasuring himself in his attic. Eve is a drug taking, alcopop-guzzling teenager, who thinks nothing of having one night stands. This is probably all in an attempt to block out the fact that she's just discovered that her mother has cancer. The book is peopled with characters that are delinquents of varying types, amongst them being drug dealers, addicts and rapists, who are all growing up together on a sink estate trying to get through each day the best way that they know how.

Narrated in turns by Adam and Eve this book pulls no punches. The gritty realism shines through this shocking tale, which is filled with graphic imagery and the vilest of language. Reading this will make you gasp with horror at their grim lifestyles, but the author writes in such a captivating manner that he pulls you right into the story and the reader will get swept away with his writing style. This is an amazing first novel by Richard Milward, a talented young author ( )

I loved this book from start to finish. It's shocking, dramatic and lots of other things as well but one thing is certain it is realistic. I've worked in the area the book is set and knew the school mentioned quite well, and it is accurate narrative from my experiences. In fact, if you were to go to any area of high deprivation and poverty in the UK and you'd be greeted with similar scenarios.

Okay, enough about the setting. Move on to the characters. Adam and Eve are truly brilliant and how good to link it to the bibical references from the Garden of Eden. However in this case Eden is not all its cracked up to be. At no point did I feel that Richard Milward was trying to be smug with the characters - I really felt he was trying to portray what he would have known about children like that from his own area. It's a sad representation of life for some school children.

The cover work is fabulous, well done those designers. Equally as big a well done to Richard Milward for writing this book at 19 years old. I can't praise this book enough for it's style, honesty, brutality and scope. ( )

I'm afraid I didn't enjoy or like this book. I couldn't find anything sympathetic about the characters and the bleak nihilism didn't sit well with me. ( )