Trigger Warnings: Instances of trauma, mentions of accidents and head injuries
Synopsis: 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.
Review: The AI Who Loved Me is an audiobook-only romance from Alyssa Cole. I like Alyssa Cole’s romances a lot, so I was curious to see how she incorporates sci-fi elements into her stories. I really enjoyed reading about Trinity. Her story isn’t just a romance. It’s also about trauma and recovery which I appreciated. I liked how tight her friend group is too. Li Wei is a little different. He’s a cyborg, so it’s harder to connect with him. That being said, I didn’t really see the chemistry between him and Trinity. As far as relationships go, I thought Li Wei had a stronger bond with Penny, the AI running through Trinity’s home. Penny and Trinity both have really strong personalities, so I don’t even know what specifically I didn’t like about Trinity and Li Wei.
The romance was, overall, cute. The audiobook is very short, so there isn’t much time that can be wasted on Trinity not knowing Li Wei is a cyborg. While the short audiobook might benefit the romance, I felt like there wasn’t enough time spent on the trauma Trinity suffered from. They gloss over Trinity’s trouble getting into elevators. The story starts with Trinity in a therapy session, but, pretty quickly, those sessions get neglected. It wouldn’t have bothered me as much, but the story takes a more sinister turn that it honestly didn’t need. I think this has more to do with it being a sci-fi romance. People tend to think sci-fi stories needs to include more action, but it really doesn’t. This could have just been a cute romance about a woman and an AI neighbor, but they felt the need to include something extra, and it just didn’t work for me. I would definitely be interested in seeing how Alyssa Cole might do sci-fi romances in the future.
Cute romance, but I wish the darker side of the sci-fi story wasn’t included.
3 howls
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