About the Book:
Just a year ago, Katrina Berg was at the pinnacle of her career. She was a rising star in the AI chatbot start-up everyone was talking about, married with an adoring husband, and had more money than she knew how to spend. Then her world combusted. Her husband, Jason, was killed in a fiery car crash. Her CEO was indicted, and, as the company's legal counsel, Katrina faces tough questions as the Feds take over and lock her out of her office. The final blow is the passing of her beloved grandmother.
Her most prized possession is the beta prototype for a new, ultra-sophisticated chatbot loaded onto her phone. The contents of Jason's email, social media backups, pictures, and every bit of data she could find were loaded into the bot, and Katrina has "talked" to him every day for the past six months. She has been amazed at how well it works. Even the syntax and words the bot uses sound like Jason. Sometimes, she imagines he isn't really dead and is right there beside her. She knows it's slowing her grief recovery, but she can't stop pretending.
On a particularly bad day, she taps out: Tell me something I don't know. The cursor blinks for several moments and seems frozen before the reply flashes quickly onto the screen: I think I was murdered.
Distraught, Katrina returns to her cozy Norwegian-flavored hometown in the Northern California redwoods and enlists the help of Seb Wallace, local restaurateur and longtime acquaintance, to try to parse out the truth of what really happened. They must navigate the complicated paths of grief, family dynamics, and second chances, as well as the complex questions of how much control technology has. And staying alive long enough to do that is far more difficult than either of them dreamed.
My Review:
Besides a good romantic suspense, this novel explores some interesting technology issues. Katrina “talks” to her husband, and he answers, through a sophisticated AI program. While the program has accumulated everything about him, it begs the question as to just how much can be known about a person from media posts, texts, etc. A related issue is the current tendency to text rather than call or even speak face to face. There was lots of other technological concepts included in the book, like Bitcoins and keys, clarified by A Note From The Authors.
The plot is suspenseful and starts with a bang and a deadly automobile accident, and Katrina's husband is killed. The plot pace cools a bit as we are taken into the restaurant world, especially of Norwegian flavor. The pace picks up again when there is a good possibility the deadly card event was not an accident but murder. There is a surprising twist near the end I was not expecting.
There is a good faith message included, centering on forgiveness. Suspense, a subtle romance and lots of technological issues makes for an entertaining novel.
My rating: 4/5 stars.
About the Authors:
(My star ratings: 5-I love it, 4-I like it, 3-It's OK, 2-I don't like it, 1-I hate it.)
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