I don't typically read sci-fi, and I can't even remember what motivated me to pick this up in the first place. But this book hooked me right from the start and I couldn't get enough of it! I loved the concepts introduce here (likely not new to real sci-fi fans, but some of them were new to me). I also loved the way this story circled around Danny, the young boy with autism (son of two main characters-ish). IF there was anything I didn't like about this book was the fact that it was largely written in 2nd person. I got used to it, but I don't typically care for reading things written that way. ( )

What a wild ride! This had a similar feel to a usual domestic thriller novel, except the wife in question isn't even the wife in question!

After the mysterious disappearance of Abbie Cullen-Scott, her husband Tim Scott uses his tech business to create a "cobot" (a companion robot) in her image. He uses photos, texts, and social media to mimic Abbie's personality almost exactly. At first, it seems that he's only done this out of grief so that he can have his wife back. As time goes on, cobot Abbie begins to wonder if that is his true intentions or if there is something more sinister going on.

The story is told in two different time lines and perspectives. One timeline is from the perspective of cobot Abbie after her creation, and the second is told from the perspective of someone inside the tech company long before human Abbie disappeared. Sometimes when an author uses this method, it breaks up the rhythm or I find that I like one perspective way more than the other. This was not the case here, as I loved them both and I found it difficult to put the book down at any point.

Most of all, I loved the misdirection and plot twists. I was pretty convinced I knew what was going on about 4 or 5 times before the end, but WOW, I never did see that ending coming!

Great read for those who love domestic thrillers with a little bit of sci-fi sprinkled in!

Thank you to NetGalley and to Ballantine for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. ( )

Suspense

I have devoured every JP Delany book that I have been able to get my hands on. The Girl Before was the book I recommended to everyone the year it came out. Believe Me was so twisty that I finished it in one sitting. This was much of the same. The book starts off with a dazed Abbie waking up in what she perceives to be a hospital room. What we later realize is that Nothing is what it seems and that every page makes you more confused until you get to the very last. This book is part domestic thriller which is in his classic style. A cautionary tale of what AI’s are capable of and a heart-breaking tale of a boy who has autism that you can’t do anything but love. I like many readers do not know what to say without giving too much away. If you haven’t read any of the books, I have mentioned I suggest starting with this one and working your way back. This is worth every minute of sleep you miss out on. ( )

Book Title: The Perfect Wife
Author: JP. Delaney
Format: Kindle

Book Title:
The title of the book ' The Perfect Wife ' is mysterious and thrilling.

Book Cover:
The cover image of the book is a picture of a woman in a distance. The abstract image creates a sense of excitement for a reader.

My review:
“THE DEVELOPMENT OF FULL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COULD SPELL THE END OF THE HUMAN RACE…. IT WOULD TAKE OFF ON ITS OWN, AND RE-DESIGN ITSELF AT AN EVER-INCREASING RATE. HUMANS, WHO ARE LIMITED BY SLOW BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION, COULDN’T COMPETE, AND WOULD BE SUPERSEDED.” As said by Stephen Hawking, BBC

The above statement by Stephen Hawking though seems to exaggerate, the role of AI in our lives around the world has taken away a few conventional traditions which were more humane rather practical. For example, there were days where people used to write letters to their loved ones. And the amount of happiness and apprehension felt by a person during the gap of sending and receiving news is unexplainable. In every walk of life, technology has overtaken many things. Then came the concept of robots.

Around the world, in huge factories, most of the work is automated and customized machines or Robots are in usage. Similarly in many other fields. There are some restaurants in Asia, where Robots are the waiters. Gradually the human is being replaced by a machine and then a robot. Some movies depicted Humanoids that act until a certain percentage as Humans. But the recent female Robot, Sophia has wondered about the world. It was as good as a normal human being. If this is possible, there is no doubt the world will shift towards these kinds of robots.

The above was a small introduction to the story here in the book ' The Perfect Wife ' by JP Delaney where the female protagonist Abbie is a Cobot. Author Delaney explains that Companion Robot is what is a Cobot.

This is a spoiler-free statement because in the initial chapters the readers meet Abbie. Tim's wife. Here, Abbie is a Cobot. She is unaware of the fact and Tim who is a Software Giant to satiate his male chauvinism develops this Cobot. He wants his wife to be a submissive being. They have a kid named Danny. When she is told by Tim that she’s a “Cobot”, aka a humanlike machine whose presence “may suffice the loss of a loved one, providing solace, company and emotional support in the aftermath of a bereavement”. In other words, according to Tim, the real Abbie died and he missed her so much he built her again, as a robot, to fill the void his beloved wife left in his life.

As a reader, it was not an easy thing to convince me that Abbie is a robot but is given such an illusion. Abbie, the Cobot is a marvelous character to read about. She is a woman. She has no feelings. She has no genitals. This is a very surprising point in the book. This book is a book that belongs to many genres. It has every element that makes it a super thriller. It has a part-parent/child relationship, some part is a sci-fi/dystopian, and part-thriller/mystery, also most importantly part-#MeToo. A great, thought-provoking book that starts as a sci-fi thriller and as the story progresses layers of skillful writing gradually unveils.

With a very dizzy and thrilling plotline, this book is much recommended for the readers who love such dystopian and sci-fi thrillers.

What I like:
1. The basic story plot
2. The mother-kid relationship is beautifully crafted
3. The topic of male domination which is rampant worldwide is very intelligently dealt
4. The concepts of women being looked down and also traces of #metoo movement in a sublime level are appreciable
5. Complete usage of AI and its concepts is attractive
6. The misuse of intelligence and power is well described
7. The thrill and mystery elements are well maintained until the end of the story
8. Abbie's confusion in identifying herself is emotional

What I didn't like:
1. If the ending was different, I could have rated the book 5 of 5
2. Some arguments have been addressed in a semi-strong manner. A little more stress would have been better.

Characters:
Apart from the central characters of Abbie, Tim, and Danny, other characters are nice to encounter. There is a very interesting character, who also narrates the reader's many parts of the story, but is invisible. This is where I loved the characterization. Every character has good scope and weight in the story.

Narration:
The very mention of ' Cobot ' attracted my attention. Being from the Computer Science background, such terms in a drama mixed with science is always interesting This book has such kind of story. The theories of Robotic humans, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial yet Human emotions, and others are dealt with in a well-mannered structure. Every theory is present at every point of the story making the story a perfect combination of many things.

Language & Grammar:
A very fine language with all good and rich constructs are found in the story. The technical and medical terms used are up to the expectations and are informative enough. Though there are some complex and mixed terms used indifferently, as the story progresses this fact gets subsided.

My Final Verdict:
A perfect psychological and sci-fi thriller!

Book Title: 4/5
Book Cover: 4/5
Plot: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
Narration: 4/5
Language & Grammar: 4/5
Final Rating: 4/5

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Here's something about me: I am a sucker for second person. When second person is done well, it can be the creepiest thing, bringing so much vividness to a story, really pulling you in. Because, after all, it's about you.

And man, this one hit that sweet spot of absolutely perfect second person narration. Honestly, even if the book had had major flaws, I think I'd still love it for that aspect alone. But it was done incredibly well, and the way everything tied back together was clever.

I downloaded my copy of this and promptly forgot about it, until I started another book that had a similar beginning and then got really excited remembering the premise, and realised I was thinking of the Delaney. I try not to go into books excited right now because I'm normally disappointed but this held up to its promise! And I'm so over psychological thrillers right now because I love them, but the market is so oversaturated with ones that have been done. This was an incredibly refreshing one with a new premise, excellent execution, and lovely spects of sci-fi as well.

I loved that it made me think. The autistic element was so fascinating, especially when tied in with the technological aspect. We really think about what it means to be happy and successful, how we should be successful teachers, and how emotions can be learned. The slow flow of information via downloading memories really added to the suspense.

Another great aspect was that the secondary characters all held their own. Jenny especially I found to be endearing. The narrator, all my yeses. And Lisa as well. All the ways that their motives came together was so strong.

The ending was ridiculous. It worked.

This gives me hope that we haven't exhausted psychological thrillers yet! Keep them coming, Delaney!

--
OHMYGOTH

THAT WAS SO GOOD I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ( )

It's honestly really sad that the author has a kid with autism considering how terribly he seems to think of autistic kids. Like yes, at the end it improved, but he still managed to make the robots more human than an actual child. It didn't make sense. The plotholes were absurd. It was just bad. I always feel really bad giving poor reviews but I'm just mad about this one. Like, the book was unnecessarily cruel to autistic people. ( )

2019 Hardcover, Ballantine Books
What is love but another name for positive reinforcement? B. F. Skinner

Tim Scott is a silicon valley entrepreneur who has become a multi-millionaire. One day he brings into the company someone he calls an artist-in-residence, who is contracted for 6 months. Her name is Abbie Cullins. Tim and Abbie begin dating shortly thereafter.
The book opens with a memory she has of the two of them together in India, during the Diwali festival. She goes to a booth to have her face painted. The young woman paints a dot in the middle of her forehead, which signifies that she is married. She protests this to the young woman, and then turns to Tim, who pulls out a ring and proposes to her.
The next thing she knows, she wakes up in the hospital.

Mike, Tim's partner at Scott's Robotics:
P.58:
" '...most people don't realize, but the main part of our brain, the bit that looks like a big walnut, is actually a relatively recent addition -- it evolved after we learned to use language. Beneath it there's an older, smaller organ called the limbic brain, which dates back to the first mammals. that's where the emotions are generated -- friendship, love, all the things that make us sociable.'
'and that's where my empathy comes from?'
'we believe so,' he says cautiously. 'And then, underneath that there's an older brain still, The reptilian brain. that's what controls our unconscious compulsions -- breathing, balance, the survival instinct. How the three structures interact is still something of a mystery. and of course, sometimes the balance gets out of whack. It's not a great design by any means, at least not on paper -- it's like a house that's been extended multiple times over the centuries, instead of being conceived from the ground up. Mostly it works fine, but when it goes wrong, it's a bitch to fix...' "

Though Abbie does not eat, herself, she's told she was previously a fabulous cook. When Mike renton, a big investor in the company, is invited over for dinner, she determines to make bouillabase. I found the steps and the ingredients sad and disgusting.
P166:
"Bouillabase is not the simplest dish to make, although the results can be spectacular. Your previous effort used Elizabeth David's recipe, but the most authentic one, the one favored by restauranteurs in marseille, is from Jean-Baptiste reboul's 1897 la cuisinère provinçale, which stipulates half a dozen different rockfish, including grouper and striped bass. Since some of them are unavailable in North america, you decide to amalgamate that recipe with one from Chez panisse.
step one: make a fumet, or broth, of chopped vegetables, fish bones, fennel seeds, and thyme.
step two: add two cups of white wine, 12 mussels, the peel of an orange, two tablespoons of a French liqueur called pernod, and an ounce of Spanish saffron. Simmer for 2 hours, then strain and set aside. The saffron alone cost over $100.
Step three: make the rouille, the spicy paste you will serve on bread to accompany the bouillabase. Take half a cup of your fish stock and soak some bread crumbs in it. Add more saffron and cayenne pepper. Chop a whole bulb of garlic very fine. (When tempted to use a garlic press, reread Elizabeth David's comment on the matter: 'I regard garlic presses as both ridiculous and pathetic, their effect being precisely the reverse of what people who buy them believe.. I have often wondered how it is that people who have once used one of these diabolical instruments don't notice this and forthwith throw the thing into the dustbin.' decide to keep chopping.)
Add six egg yolks and whisk slowly together, adding a mixture of half Olive and half grape seed oil, drop by drop, in the manner of mayonnaise. char two red peppers and two tomatoes over an open flame, then remove the skins and deseed. Pulverize in a mortar, and combine."
And after all that time and expense, when the guests try the soup, they spit it out and make faces. it turns out that when Abbie asked the clerk at the seafood shop for fish bones, he thought she meant for her cat, and gave her fish bones out of the trash. Laugh out loud.

After dinner, Tim defends his vision of uploading people's brains into robots:
P.179-80:
" 'most people think death is inevitable,' Tim goes on. But what if that's just a failure of our collective imagination? What if death is just another problem to be hacked? right now it's a massacre out there -- 50 million human beings mowed down every year. If that resulted from any cause other than old age, don't you think we'd have done something about it?' He looks slowly around the table, then back at renton. 'Robots aren't just the potential saviors of humanity. Robots are the future of humanity. And once you start to see it like that, you realize they're way, way more important than some stupid texting app. Peter thiel, Sergey brin, Larry Ellison -- they're all investing billions in this area.' "

Abbie and Tim are married now, but from her time as an artist hanging out with musicians, Abbie occasionally likes to drink. Tim's lifestyle demands a clean-living approach, so he sends Abbie to a treatment center in Napa valley called Moving On:
P.224-5:
"some of us had a preconceived notion that places like that were little more than fancy spas. but then we dug a little deeper. The reason Moving On had such high success rates was not the pool, or the gym, and certainly not the alcohol-free wine. Moving In treated addiction with chemical aversives -- specifically, apomorphine and succinylcholine. Apomorphine, we read, was administered by injection as the patient prepared to ingest a small quantity of recreational drugs, such as a line of coke. It produced overwhelming nausea followed by involuntary vomiting; over time the two became inextricably linked in the patient's mind, so that even looking at cocaine induced a feeling of nausea. succinylCholine was similar but different: it caused immediate paralysis to every muscle in the body, including the muscles of respiration. the subjects believe themselves to be asphyxiating -- indeed, they were asphyxiating. the drug wore off in under a minute, but the terror it induced was so severe that its use in CIA interrogations had been banned, even during the Bush era. That rehab had been no vacation for abbie."

Tim shows Abbie a copy of the prenuptial. After he leaves, she reads it. She is shocked by what she reads. Megan, the executive-dating-service entrepreneur who brought Tim and Abbie together, tells her:
P.260:
" 'the point of the prenup is never the prenup,' she says flatly. 'the point of the prenup is, first, to get two idealistic, loved-up individuals to be honest about what their expectations for this relationship are. and second, to provide some kind of road map for a healthy marriage.' She waves a hand in the direction of silicon valley. 'most of my clients couldn't navigate a cocktail party without a list of step-by-step instructions, preferably written in Python or JavaScript. I like to think that by incorporating things like date nights, vacations, and non-work days into a prenup, I'm giving them some sort of blueprint for normality.'
'I think Tim may have taken it more literally than you intended. Getting Abbie to take a drug test every time she seemed a bit too cheerful.' "
(I think of my sister's prenuptial.)

Tim and Abbie have a son after their first year of marriage. for four wonderful years they are deliriously in love with their little one. But at the age of four, he changes drastically, and the doctors are able to diagnose him as having Heller's syndrome. The school, Meadowbank, that Tim chooses for their son uses drastic measures to change children on the spectrum's behavior. This is what Abbie finds when she asks for a tour of the school:
P.286-7:
"Your eye is drawn through one of the classroom windows. a teenager has begun flapping his hands in front of his face, his elbows pumping up and down. a member of staff sitting at the back reaches out to a bank of controllers and taps one. Instantly, the student's body jumps, as if stung.
'we make no apology for using these techniques,' hadfield adds. 'if you look at the studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of behavioral approaches, they all used similar methods.' he nods through the window. 'When Simeon came to us a year ago, he was biting his hands until they bled. his parents had taped boxing gloves to his hands to try to stop him, and he was deranged with stress from trying to rip the tape off with his teeth. using the GED, we reduced his hand biting to around three episodes a week.'
'and danny?' You say, appalled. 'Does he get shocked too?'
'he has been. I'm glad to say that, in his case, the aversives had a very beneficial effect.' "

Combot Abbie has found that the real Abbie has run away. When she goes to meet Mike at Scott's robotics, to avoid Tim's finding out, Jenny, Mike's wife, joins in the conversation.
P.359-9:
" 'so I started inviting myself around to Abbie's house for coffee, and gradually it all spilled out. she wanted to leave, to take Danny away from that horrible School Tim had chosen and start over somewhere different. Somewhere kinder.
another flashback. The continuing fights over meadowbank -- such incredible fights. Tim surprised to find his usually laid-back wife so stubborn. but equally, refusing to give ground himself.
Fights that turned increasingly from the theoretical to the personal.
'you had your chance with danny, and what's the best you could come up with? Fucking kinesiology and head massages. It's time we did this properly.'
And then, the most devastating exchange of all.
'I'm his mother. Surely I know what's right for him?'
'a mother who bore me a defective son. What does that say about you?'
you stared at him, heartbroken. Because, whether he really meant it or not, there was no going back now."

On the page after the ending of the book, the reader is faced with this:
methods and systems for robot and user interaction are provided to generate a personality for the robot. The robot may be programmed to take on the personality of real world people ( e. g. ... A deceased loved one or celebrity )
-- US patent no. 8996429,
methods and systems for robot personality development, granted to Google inc. In 2015

As any person who reads knows, most jobs will be replaced with robots, in the future. Robots don't get sick, robots don't need to be paid, robots don't need to sleep etc etc.
I loved this book. The inclusion of a character who is on the Spectrum was especially eye-opening. After the ending of the book, when you read the author's afterword, you understand why he knows so much about a child with autism.









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I received an advance copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This is a GREAT book. Abi is dead, supposedly, so her techie husband uploads her into a robot. Or a cobot, companion robot. Before she disappeared, Abi and Tom had a son who developed Autism. Delaney knows what he’s talking about. He has a son with Autism. Lots of themes in this book. Who gets to play god and why. What will a parent do for a child? Who can you trust at the end of the day? ( )

really unique read
I was thinking about this on and off yesterday after finishing it for hours
the only downside to this one - I was hoping for a different ending
( )

Tale of Robotic Suspense

The Perfect Wife is one of those slow, very slow, reveal novels that exposes what first appears as a sort of perfection for something decidedly imperfect and, well, perverse.

A genius tech company founder who seems to exhibit all the worst features of Steve Jobs lost his wife five years ago. He claimed she had died in a surfing accident while alone at the couple’s super expensive beach house. The authorities thought otherwise, but never could prove he had murdered her. So, what does a techie with nearly unlimited resources who also happens to be in the business of creating human-like robots for commercial use and who was madly in love with his wife do? Yes, he builds a robotic duplicate of her (minus her sex organs, because, you know, he’d recreating a goddess), loads her with his wife’s memories garnered from texts, emails, video, all the stuff that establishes someone as human these days, and there you are, the wife once adored, now even more adorable, because, if you haven’t guessed it yet, he thinks he can more easily control her.

The recreated wife, Abbie, serves as the main narrator. (A second unidentified narrator fills in details about Abbie at Tim’s company and their relationship and Tim’s temperament.) Through her, we learn of Abbie’s past, of her relationship with Tim, the overbearing genius, and her growing concern about what happened to the original Abbie. We also witness her development into something approximating human, particularly in her love for Danny, the little boy of Abbie and Tim. Danny is autistic and it’s Abbie who establishes ways to communicate with him. She becomes so human, so enamored with her sentient life that she begins to hatch a plan to preserve it, as she serves as an investigator for Tim, who claims he created her to find the real Abbie, whom he says he believes still lives. Of course, all manner of questions get raised in the reader’s mind? Did Tim kill Abbie? If Abbie ran away, why? How could she run away if she loved Danny? If she still lived, what would that mean for the robotic Abbie? What will happen if Abbie finds the real Abbie? What will become of Danny? So many questions pop up as you work your way to the end, which is quite twisty in more ways than one. Really, it should have been a really compelling suspense novel.

Unfortunately, it goes on and on for too long. Some novels deserve to run more than 400 pages. Some novels that run more than 500 pages feel too short; you really don’t want to leave the world created by the author. This is one of those novels that would have been better with 100 fewer pages. Length is its biggest weakness. We certainly can appreciate all that Delaney crams into this: Tim’s self-absorption; Tim’s misogyny; Tim’s obsession with perfection; Tim’s Pygmalion complex; robotic Abby’s humanity; Danny’s autism and methods for engaging him. It all, however, gets to be too much and robs the book of what it is supposed to have, suspense. ( )

Tale of Robotic Suspense

The Perfect Wife is one of those slow, very slow, reveal novels that exposes what first appears as a sort of perfection for something decidedly imperfect and, well, perverse.

A genius tech company founder who seems to exhibit all the worst features of Steve Jobs lost his wife five years ago. He claimed she had died in a surfing accident while alone at the couple’s super expensive beach house. The authorities thought otherwise, but never could prove he had murdered her. So, what does a techie with nearly unlimited resources who also happens to be in the business of creating human-like robots for commercial use and who was madly in love with his wife do? Yes, he builds a robotic duplicate of her (minus her sex organs, because, you know, he’d recreating a goddess), loads her with his wife’s memories garnered from texts, emails, video, all the stuff that establishes someone as human these days, and there you are, the wife once adored, now even more adorable, because, if you haven’t guessed it yet, he thinks he can more easily control her.

The recreated wife, Abbie, serves as the main narrator. (A second unidentified narrator fills in details about Abbie at Tim’s company and their relationship and Tim’s temperament.) Through her, we learn of Abbie’s past, of her relationship with Tim, the overbearing genius, and her growing concern about what happened to the original Abbie. We also witness her development into something approximating human, particularly in her love for Danny, the little boy of Abbie and Tim. Danny is autistic and it’s Abbie who establishes ways to communicate with him. She becomes so human, so enamored with her sentient life that she begins to hatch a plan to preserve it, as she serves as an investigator for Tim, who claims he created her to find the real Abbie, whom he says he believes still lives. Of course, all manner of questions get raised in the reader’s mind? Did Tim kill Abbie? If Abbie ran away, why? How could she run away if she loved Danny? If she still lived, what would that mean for the robotic Abbie? What will happen if Abbie finds the real Abbie? What will become of Danny? So many questions pop up as you work your way to the end, which is quite twisty in more ways than one. Really, it should have been a really compelling suspense novel.

Unfortunately, it goes on and on for too long. Some novels deserve to run more than 400 pages. Some novels that run more than 500 pages feel too short; you really don’t want to leave the world created by the author. This is one of those novels that would have been better with 100 fewer pages. Length is its biggest weakness. We certainly can appreciate all that Delaney crams into this: Tim’s self-absorption; Tim’s misogyny; Tim’s obsession with perfection; Tim’s Pygmalion complex; robotic Abby’s humanity; Danny’s autism and methods for engaging him. It all, however, gets to be too much and robs the book of what it is supposed to have, suspense. ( )

I barely skimmed the premise of this novel, it was actually the cover and the author that drew me in because it was so similar to The Girl Before, so I somehow managed to dive in not realising it was going to be a sci-fi. I don't actually read a lot of sci-fi, mostly because I find a lot of it is set in space and I prefer the technology side of things.

Anyway!

This book gave me MAJOR Stepford Wives, I, Robot, and Bladerunner vibes which I absolutely loved. Three of my favourite tales!

I'm not usually a fan of second person perspective, though in this case I felt it really worked. It made the story feel all the more creepy, as though you're being watched, throughout, and there were little breaks in between with a different perspective that made it a bit less overbearing.

The plot was so intricately woven, and the characters were quite surprising. It kind of had a tiny hint of American Psycho, though I don't want to give too much away.

The story gives you hope and then takes it away and gives it back and takes it away again. It's a wild ride.

Delaney also writes of the parents having an autistic child, which he speaks about in the acknowledgements, referencing his own experience. I found the way he wrote about the child in this novel very real, very honest and so loving. I would read it again just to re-experience that.

All in all, a really good read and now I'm thinking I need to go back and finish The Girl Before! ( )

My jury is still out on this book...parts were riveting and I was really intrigued and found it very interesting. Other parts were slow, lagging and didn't really seem to fit in with the story, like if they made it a movie those parts would definitely be left out. All in all, it was a decent read and I'd maybe recommend it to a few people and I will check out more from this author as I think they are full of really interesting ideas, I just hope they get an editor that helps them "trim the fat" a bit more. ( )

My jury is still out on this book...parts were riveting and I was really intrigued and found it very interesting. Other parts were slow, lagging and didn't really seem to fit in with the story, like if they made it a movie those parts would definitely be left out. All in all, it was a decent read and I'd maybe recommend it to a few people and I will check out more from this author as I think they are full of really interesting ideas, I just hope they get an editor that helps them "trim the fat" a bit more. ( )

Review to come. Audiobook. ( )

This is a book I would’ve never picked up in a million years but I went in reading this blindly without reading the summary or any reviews beforehand and I’m so glad I did. I don’t want to post any spoilers but do yourself a favor and pick this book up!! This had me hooked and I couldn’t stop reading it until I got to the end. Speaking of the ending, what the actual fuck did I just read? Seriously, be ready for plot twists galore.

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Very clever story.
Unusual writing style.
Keeps you guessing.
It's not really a romance though the main characters are a married couple.
Mystery as to what is going on. Lots of twists and red herrings.
Not a HEA as such but I was satisfied with the end.
( )

In this instance I am not sure of what I have read. Is it Science Fiction? Is it a mystery? Is it a thriller? Maybe is is a combination of all three, I dont know. What it is, is a very interesting and enjoyable read. The author manages to combine everything into one surprisingly good fun story.

We have a missing trophy wife, we have an AI substituting for a trophy wife, we have maybe a murder mystery, we have a tech multimillionaire genius and we have an autistic little boy who lost his mommy. What a mess. Fortunately for the reader it is a fun mess to work our way through.

J.P. Delaney has written a couple of pretty good books in the past and has created unique approaches to presenting them to the reader. In this one his approach is more straight forward however is does have some interesting twists and turns and candidly a surprising ending. Everything is very well thought out creating a story where all the necessary parts are presented yet until the last chapter it was hard to discern, not where the story was going but to how it would arrive there. And arrive there it did in a surprising manner.

Overall it was a very well written and conceived story. The flow was excellent and did not miss a beat as each new issue or event was visited. Somehow the character development for an AI entity was excellent; that being necessary if the story was to be effective as it was. Found the book every enjoyable and probably like it best of any of J.P. Delaney's books. ( )

Please note that I received this book via NetGalley for free. This did not affect my rating or review.

So, I was pretty vocal about how badly I disliked "The Girl Before." So you are probably wondering what in the world caused me to willingly pick out "The Perfect Wife" to review. Well, I heard that it had a lot of science fiction elements in it and since I want to read more science fiction this year I decided to go for it. I initially thought it was going to be something superficial, but Delaney works in the science fiction aspects very well. I am a bit disappointed though that other reviewers gave away the jaw dropping beginning (don't do that!) though was happy I was unspoiled for the rest of this. "The Perfect Wife" does a great job of showing Abbie before when she first meets her husband Tim and then what life is like now that she has waken up. The only reason why I didn't give this five stars is that parts of the book dragged here and there. Also, I wish that we had some confirmations on some loose threads that Delaney left dangling.

"The Perfect Wife" follows a woman named Abbie. She wakes up in a room and is told that five years ago she was in an accident, and the man that is looming over her is her husband Tim. Abbie quickly finds out she is ready to go home with her husband Tim who she barely remembers. Abbie's memories slowly start to come back and she remembers that Tim is a CEO of a company focused on developing cobots (companion robots) and he is up there with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates in terms of money and influence in the tech industry. Abbie also realizes that she and Tim had a son together, Danny. Danny was diagnosed with Heller's disease (FYI, this is a childhood disintegrative disorder (CDD) and is a rare pervasive developmental disorder which involves regression of developmental ability in language, social function and motor skills) and worries that her son won't remember her and she is scared that her being away/sick has caused his condition to worsen. However, Abbie returns to her home and finds it pretty much unchanged from when she was there last. And after a while Abbie starts to find clues that things were not all champagne and roses with Tim.

So first off. We have after Abbie (who we get to follow via first person point of view) and before Abbie (who we only hear about via an anonymous narrator). You realize right away why there are differences between Abbie before and after. Abbie before seems more confident and all of the dialogue showing how she was when she was first hired by Tim to be an artist in residence at his company showed a woman who was not going to be bowled over by anyone. Slowly though via the Abbie before and after you start to get a better picture of Abbie and also of Tim. Abbie is warned here and there about Tim who starts to do what he can to attract Abbie and start to date her. You are left with two people who it sounds like fell in love and then got dealt a terrible hand when their son was diagnosed with Heller. However, that's just a small part of the story. I can't really get into this character much without spoiling, but I thought the way that Delaney handled Abbie was very good. I had sympathy for both versions that we are shown and loved how it ended.

Tim is a typical tech bro that seems to have softened up when he met and fell in love with Abbie. It seems that Tim only sees Abbie as perfect, she's the perfect wife and mother. He doesn't see anything wrong with her at all.

We also get a lot of secondary characters that I thought were developed very well. We have Abbie after interacting with Tim's best friend who also works at the company (Mark), Mark's wife Jenny (who also works for Tim), Abbie's sister Lisa, and Danny's therapist that seems to party live in and take care of him.

The writing I thought was good. I was initially worried when we went back and forth, but I see why Delaney did that. You also have the narrator becoming more and more omnipotent about things after a while and you realize why that is at the end. Delaney also did a good job with talking about and showing how the tech industry even years in the future still has a whole dude bro culture that needs changed. I also thought it was great that Delaney showed us the answer to a certain extent about do androids dream of electric sheep.

The flow was a bit clunky at first, but quickly smooths it way out. I think it's just because we have that reveal very early in the story and then we jump back in time to when Abbie was first hired by Tim and then we jump forward again. After a while I got used to it.

The ending was heartbreaking and unexpected. I liked it though we are given a clue that there's a cycle that is going to get repeated until someone finally puts a stop to it. ( )

Until I reached the final chapter, I was ready to heap praise on this novel, which is best described as Gone Girl meets Rebecca, if the second Mrs de Winter had been a robot. So clever, I thought! What a great concept! And Abbie - version 2.0 - is a brilliant character who actually grows, from a 'perfect wife' into a rogue AI with a deadly line in sarcasm. Better than Tim the Victorian gothic villain, anyhow.

'I made her better, I fixed her,' Tim told Mike in the same location, a couple of days later. 'Anyone would do the same for someone they really loved.'

I thought, from the blurb, that the twist in the tale would be the discovery that 'Abbie' was a machine, so I was somewhat taken aback when her situation was explained in the first chapter. Tim Scott, her husband and a modern day Dr Frankenstein, is creepy from the outset, however, and imagined that I knew exactly what was coming, expecting more of an unravelling than a revelation. Wrong again! Well, I was sort of right, but also satisfied by how Abbie took back her story, which is told in the second person. Even the subplot of the autistic son, taken from the author's own personal experience, was realistically and sympathetically told - I'm not in the slightest bit maternal, but loved how poor Danny's condition helped Abbie to form a human bond with one person in her fake family.

The ending was a disappointment, and the reason for a last minute drop from five stars to four. One minute I was thrown by Abbie's dark turn and eagerly awaiting her final battle for existence - only to be rewarded with evil bots and a distinctly Asimovian solution. I was left scratching my head, I must admit.

Overall, though, I hugely enjoyed this psychological thriller, racing through in a day, and will be reading more from the author. ( )

Tim Scott, a computer/robot wiz, and Abby Cullen, an artist, marry and have a child who becomes autistic. Tim is a very controlling person and a year or so after Danny, their child, becomes autistic, Abby disappears. While Abby worked for Tim's company, Scott Robotics, they create an Abby robot that goes through several iterations. Five years after her disappearance, Tim has created an empathetic Abby robot. This is the story of the robot and her interactions with the family and friends. I would have given this five stars except for the ending which was very confusing. ( )

The Perfect Wife by J.P. Delaney is a 2019 Ballantine publication.

Ingenious!

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started reading this book. I did not realize it had a sci-fi element in it, but, I’m glad I chose it without picking up on that, because otherwise I might have passed on it.

The author has constructed a very clever premise in which Abbie, who suddenly awakes- unsure of herself or her surroundings, believes she must have been in an accident of some kind. However, she soon learns, from her husband, Tim, that she is a ‘companion robot’ made in the image of his dead wife. She begins to piece together memories and information from the 'real' Abbie as she attempts to connect with her autistic son and be the perfect wife to Tim.

What ensues is an intelligent and darkly imaginative look the consequences of technology, and the possibility of robotic feelings of empathy and maybe even accountability. Some of the characters are almost satirical, but the story is still wildly original. As the mystery deepens, so do the complexities, and the various, and often surprising, emotions that develop with the story.

The format is also unique with both first and second person narratives, which paves the way for an incredibly shocking revelation that made my jaw drop open.

Overall, I really liked this book. It was shocking, and gave my brain a nice workout, and was a nice change of pace for me.

4 stars ( )

Part SciFi, part psychological thriller, part love story. Once into this book, I had my questions if it was for me. Science Fiction is not something I enjoy, or ever read. But, something kept me going. I’m glad I did. It was an enjoyable read, going back and forth from the Robot Abbie to Abbie in real life to Tim’s work environment seamlessly.

This book delves into AI (artificial intelligence) companion robots (cabots) made by a Tim a tech genius after his wife, Abbie disappears and is presumed dead. He is left with their small autistic son, Danny. The robot is eerily the exact replica of Abbie, with a few small tweaks. Memories have been downloaded. Was Tim’s love for Abbie so strong he couldn’t bear to lose her? Or is he a mad scientist?

I haven’t read this author’s previous best sellers, although I have them. I look forward to reading the. The writing style sucks you in immediately. I recommend this book if you want something to think about, out of your normal genre or just a quick thriller! Great vacation read!

Thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for this ARC of this book. Opinion is mine alone!

Sent from my iPhone ( )

3-3.5 Stars
Not everything is as it seems with The Perfect Wife.
First things first, I enjoyed this but quickly realized it wasn't quite what I thought it would be. It's more of a sci-fi thriller than it is a psychological thriller - which I'm still okay with because I love science fiction. But based on the synopsis, I initially thought it was about a woman miraculously woken from a coma after 5 years only to discover her marriage - and life before her mysterious accident - isn't what it seems.
What really happens is Abbie is brought back as an AI 'cobot' - an empathetic one at that - with the previously deceased Abbie's memories.

It's certainly a unique read. The idea of bringing a deceased loved on back as a robot is...crazy. And terrifying to be honest. I've seen enough sci-fi movies to know that allowing robots to think for themselves almost never ends well.
The chapters alternate between the present - cobot Abbie - and the past with an unknown POV of Tim and Abbie's history. We are given a look into who Tim really is and well, it's not pretty.

The Perfect Wife is full of twists and turns meant to mislead you all leading up to an ending that in my opinion was quite surprising. And for the most part, satisfying.

Despite not being what I expected, I was pleasantly surprised with where the story went. There's still plenty of family drama and suspense as we follow Abbie's adaptation to 'life' and the mystery of what really happened to the real Abbie. Was it truly a tragic accident or was Tim somehow involved in her disappearance? Or did she simply leave to start a new, easier life?
It's disturbing how far Tim goes and the way he views the world/others. This begs the question, when it comes to AI, how far is too far?

*ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. ( )