True Life in Uncanny Valley

January 1, 2025
A Seattle teen conceals her true identity as the long-abandoned daughter of a celebrated tech giant to gain entry into his household. Eleanor feels on the outside of her relationships with her emotionally abusive mother and seemingly perfect older sister, Rosalind. She's even more distant from her famous father, Hugo Harrison. But Hugo's work in AI has made his company a household name, and his wife, Aurora, and young son, Arlo, constantly appear in Aurora's carefully curated social media feed, giving Eleanor a window into their lives. Eleanor has kind, quirky, supportive, fabulous friends in Arden Lee and Clementine, but when Aurora posts an ad for a nanny for Arlo for the summer months, she can't resist applying (without revealing her connection to the family). As Eleanor begins to feel increasingly uneasy about the top-secret work her self-centered father is doing, this thoughtful novel at times almost crosses the line into the thriller genre. The tech mystery propels readers on, as does the romance Eleanor has with Nino, a home-schooled boy whose father also works for Aurora. Caletti compellingly explores big questions about class, the ethics of AI, and the price people pay for depicting perfect lives online. But Eleanor's poignant vulnerability with those around her as she yearns for a family that will truly accept her is the real focus, easily bringing readers into her corner. All main characters read white. An at times heartbreaking but ultimately hopeful story about chosen family.(Fiction. 14-18)

COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 1, 2025
Sixteen-year-old Eleanor is obsessed with learning all she can about her birth father, tech mogul Hugo Harrison, who ended his relationship with her mother long before Eleanor can remember. When the opportunity presents itself, she takes a summer job under an assumed name as a nanny for his two-year-old son, Arlo, and in the process gets to know Hugo's young wife, Aurora. As Eleanor takes a front-row seat to a family she thought she knew all about from social media, readers may be less surprised than she is at how much isn't what it seems; however, it's easy to empathize with her wish to know her father and to believe the best of him. And Eleanor, who makes frequent, admiring reference to an early comic-book heroine named Miss Fury, becomes more heroic herself as she grows to question Hugo's ethics in developing his AI projects, including his treatment of both Aurora and Arlo. Her questions are likely to prompt readers' own about how to know what to believe, and about what makes AI (or anything else) go "from cool and interesting to creepy and disturbing." Shoshana Flax

(Copyright 2025 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

February 1, 2025
Grades 9-11 When the opportunity arises to covertly join her estranged father's family as the livein nanny for her half brother, Eleanor jumps at the chance. Now living the life thanks to Hugo Harrison's groundbreaking app and his revolutionary incoming robotic artificial intelligence, Eleanor still can't help but wonder about the ethics behind her father's work. Meanwhile, building a relationship with her father's young wife is more complex than Eleanor anticipates, especially as she tries to keep her identity a secret and stay true to her and her friends' book club values. From the first lines, Caletti continues to share her gift of dropping her reader seamlessly into the scene, as if they were there to personally observe Eleanor's story unfold itself with a distinct voice. Through Eleanor's introspective eyes, this story asks timely and important questions about the origin and nature of AI, which are woven into evergreen themes of family dynamics, sense of self, and coming of age. Hand to fans of Pamela Morrow's Hello Strange (2020) and readers who enjoyed themes of AI in Neal Shusterman's Scythe (2016).

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