Never thought I would be rooting for a robot…
Here’s more about the book
Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner, Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ready for him every night, wears the cute outfits he orders for her, and adjusts her libido to suit his moods. True, she’s not the greatest at keeping Doug’s place spotless, but she’s trying to please him. She’s trying hard.
She’s learning, too.
Doug says he loves that Annie’s artificial intelligence makes her seem more like a real woman, but the more human Annie becomes, the less perfectly she behaves. As Annie’s relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder whether Doug truly desires what he says he does. In such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?
Find it on Amazon | Find it on Bookshop.org
My thoughts
I got to be honest, I am really picky when it comes to stories about AI and robots, sentience, and whether they should be treated with the same respect as a human. But Annie Bot changed my brain chemistry a little bit because I found myself caring a lot for an inanimate object.
It’s hard to figure out where this story is going from the beginning. At first you think this is the story of a lonely dude and his relationship with his sex bot, but with the book coming from Annie’s perspective, you can see that for Annie there’s a lot more going on below the surface. I feel like this book was in some way a metaphor for the kinds of experiences people have throughout a relationship. While Doug and Annie’s relationship wasn’t the most traditional, there were some of those insecurities, doubts, and worries that I know I’ve felt in relationships before. How can I improve myself to better suit him? If I don’t do this, he won’t love me anymore.
And what you see is the consequence of that behavior. Suddenly, Annie goes from being self-conscious about her every move to finding herself and learning to live without her owner. There’s the knowledge that there’s more in the world than the four walls of her small apartment and the only man that she’s ever known. She has the capacity to be mean, to lie, to be sexy and as the story progresses, you see this exponential growth in Annie that ultimately leads to her decision to leave.
What’s interesting are the parallels this story has to human experience. If Annie was a real human, we would be screaming at the book to dump him and leave. If she wasn’t owned by Doug, we would be hoping that she would just step outside the front door and never come back. But if anything, this book showcases how some possessive relationships can go wrong; the want to leave tied to the desire to stay. It’s that complexity of human emotions (especially when dealing with a narcissist) that makes this story so interesting. Luckily, this story is a hopeful one and while not everyone gets a happy ending in these sort of relationships, you see Annie gets the kind of ending she deserves.
Overall, this was unexpectedly an interesting interplay on relationships and the usage of a robot over a woman brings a perspective level that kept me intrigued throughout.
Simone and Her Books 