An ambitious tale that doesn’t quite deliver.
A reissue of Clarke’s (Our Lady of the Ice, 2015, etc.) 2013 novel about the relationship between a roboticist’s daughter and the android she’s known since childhood.
Cat Novak is a little girl when her father brings a stranger named Finn home to act as her personal tutor. Despite her age, Cat knows that something is different about the new arrival, but her parents avoid her questions about him. At first, she draws her own conclusion from what she knows about Finn (he doesn’t eat, he doesn’t get cold or tired, his eyes shine silver in the dark) and thinks he’s a ghost. She cares for him anyway, even after he reveals the truth: he’s an android—the most advanced one to ever exist. As time passes, Finn continues to live in the Novak household, acting as her father’s lab assistant. Even though she knows he’s not human, Cat’s feelings for Finn deepen as she becomes an adult, leading her to question just how sentient he is: does he care for her? Can he care for her? When tragedy upends her life, she turns to Finn for consolation—a choice that sets them on a path that will alter both their lives in unexpected ways. Although this setup may sound like a girl-meets-robot romance novel, this love story is set in a firmly science-fictional setting. Much of Clarke’s worldbuilding has a very light and deft touch, putting the story in a near-future version of the United States as the world rebuilds after a series of environmental crises. But, at times, the detail is too scant—for instance, it’s never completely clear how many other androids there are or how exactly they differ from Finn in terms of appearance or self-awareness. The humans sometimes feel lacking in detail, as well: Cat makes some terrible decisions with her life, but when she finally becomes conscious of the inner conflicts that drove her to her bad choices, it feels forced and unnatural, resulting in a rather unsatisfying character arc.
An ambitious tale that doesn’t quite deliver.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4814-7529-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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