Audiobook Review – Annie Bot by Sierra Greer, Narrated by Jennifer Jull Araya (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 9 hours and 31 minutes
Publisher:‎ HarperAudio
Release Date: March 19, 2024
ASIN: B0C5K27FW6
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Borrowed Audiobook from Library
Rating: 4/5 stars

“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 pert 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 AI makes her seem more like a real woman, so Annie explores human traits such as curiosity, secrecy, and longing. But becoming more human also means becoming less perfect, and as Annie’s relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder: Does Doug really desire what he says he wants? And in such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself?”

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I borrowed this on audiobook from my library.

Thoughts: This was well done and covers ground that has been covered in other books but with some new twists. It reminded me of a typical sci-fi that looks at robot sentience blended with “The Stepford Wives”. I found it engaging and unsettling all at once.

Annie Bot was created initially to be the perfect housemaid for Doug, but then he enabled her sentience and put her in “cuddle bunny” mode so that she could become his perfect girlfriend. She keeps upsetting Doug, and she’s not sure why. She wears the outfits he provides, and is learning how to keep the apartment clean (of course, cuddle bunny mode isn’t really optimized for cleaning). Doug owns her and can decide to change her appearance, libido, and even her memory at his whim. Annie Bot is starting to think that something is wrong with this situation.

This book looks at something many other sci-fi books have looked at. That is the issue of making robots more sentient so that they suit human needs better but also continuing to treat them as owned objects because….well that is what they still are. Annie Bot is bought by Doug and programmed to please him, but he wants her to act more and more human. However, as she gets more human, she is less perfect and starts to realize that everything in her life is about what Doug wants. She starts to believe she is owed more than that.

Aside from the sentient robot issue there are other social issues breached here as well. If someone is controlling and abusive to human female women, is it okay that this is transferred to a robot that is sentient? What about when a person, Doug in this case, doesn’t want other people to know how dependent they’ve become on artificial intelligence (Annie Bot in this case) for their emotional and physical well-being? Additionally, all of Annie’s progress is attributed to how awesome Doug is in his interactions with her rather than Annie herself because she is a machine and couldn’t possibly have feelings and thoughts of her own.

It’s ground that has been discussed before in sci-fi novels. This book puts a more feminist bent on it (although to be fair, it is mentioned that there are male robots that provide similar services) and takes a look at free will in general.

The book is well written and easy to engage with. I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook was well done. The narration is easy to listen to and follow. If you enjoy audiobooks, I would recommend reading this on audiobook.

My Summary (4/5): Overall this was a good book and I stayed engaged in it. I don’t feel like there were really any ground-breaking ideas in here, but the idea of sentient robots is explored in an excellent way. This type of issue gets more and more real as we incorporate more and more AI into our day to day lives. This book is unique in that it explores this topic in a way that touches both on emotional and social issues that could be created by having humans have such heavy dependence on an artificial lifeform like this.