The A.I. Who Loved Me
Ratings12
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings12
Average rating3.6
The critically acclaimed Audible Original narrated by Regina Hall, with a cameo by Mindy Kaling, now availebl in ebook and print formats! Trinity Jordan leads a quiet, normal life: working from home for the Hive, a multifunctional government research center, and recovering from the incident that sent her into a tailspin. But the life she's trying to rebuild is plagued by mishaps when Li Wei, her neighbor's super sexy and super strange nephew, moves in and turns things upside down. Li Wei's behavior is downright odd?and the attraction building between them is even more so. When an emergency pulls his aunt away from the apartment complex, Trinity decides to keep an eye on him...and slowly discovers that nothing is what it seems. For one thing, Li Wei isn't just the hot guy next door?he's the hot A.I. next door. In fact, he's so advanced that he blurs the line between man and machine. It's up to Trinity to help him achieve his objective of learning to be human, but danger is mounting as they figure out whether he's capable of the most illogical human behavior of all...falling in love.
Reviews with the most likes.
Cute and does some really innovative things with the audio-only format that would be hard to render well in print, I think. Loved the voice acting, especially Regina Hall, who narrates Trinity's chapters, and Mindy Kaling, as the Alexa-like voice assistant Penny. (It is pretty great that the evil corporation/government entity in this book is a pretty clear Amazon analogy, considering Audible is owned by Amazon.) The book is a pretty light romantic comedy most of the way through, but it takes a hard left into more straightforward science fiction/thriller territory about 75% of the way through, with a twist that I had partially figured out but didn't entirely see coming. Content notes behind this warning: possible content warnings here are PTSD and brainwashing/gaslighting/mental manipulation - I'm happy to discuss other potential ones if anyone has questions All in all, not quite what I expected, but definitely enjoyable!
Very good book! It didn't go in the direction I thought it would. I was expecting the Star Trek TNG plot with Data's “mother” - that Li Wei was a robot copy of Trinity's dead human boyfriend. But that isn't what's going on. I was surprised at the truth, in a good way, so I won't spoil it!
This is only available as a multi-cast audiobook right now, but the author has said that print & ebook editions are planned. All of the performers are excellent, but I don't understand why it wasn't done as an audio play. It's mainly two narrators, with some actors sometimes doing specific characters, but not always. Very strange.
This has been marketed as a romcom and I think that's a little misleading. The romance is very good, and it has some light humor. But the sci-fi elements are very relevant, and done well, rather than being just a backdrop for a cute story, which is what I expected based on the cover and blurb. Instead, this is a seriously dystopian setting, and it really feels like a possible near future, unfortunately.
I like AI protagonists in general, and I enjoyed Li Wei's PoV here. We see him slowly learning to be a person through his interactions with Trinity; it's an appealing character arc for a hero in a romance. Trinity is also a great character, and I really felt her emotions, at every moment.
Overall, this is a clever story. My only real complaint is that I was left a little confused at the end, but it seems like there's a sequel planned (with different main characters).
The Plot Twist made me LOVE this and I cannot WAIT for the rest in this series!!! I need an entire book on Penny please and thank you.
Once it got to the AI part of this book, it was actually interesting to me. I love how the parts written from the perspective of the AI considered how something trying to learn human habits might talk and think.
Everything outside of that was pretty terrible. The writing was trite and the romance aspects just creeped me out. I wish this had just been a straight SF book so I could have gotten more of the AI and less of the main character.
