Tim Owens is the co founder of a robotic company trying to enhance AI. Tim meets the artist Abbie and hires her to work at his firm where they fall in love, marry and have their little boy Danny. Tim wants everything to be perfect but it turns out that Abbie nor Danny is what he would call perfect because they don’t fit into his ‘intelligent’ world the way he thinks they should. So Abbie wakes up wondering what has happened and where she is. Tim the Tech titan starts to explain.
JP Delaney writes a surprising twisted novel that keeps you in its grip until the last by page.
#Netgalley #BallantineBooks #ThePerfectWife

With this title, I thought the book was written about me -haha. When I selected this book, I didn’t realize it had a Science Fiction element to it. I’m not a huge fan of Science Fiction, and I had a hard time buying into the AI aspect that she could be created so much like his dead wife and have emotions like a human being. Because she was a cobot, I also think I was having trouble connecting to Abbie because I knew she wasn’t real. I did continue, though, and eventually became a little more invested in Abbie’s character. The only character I could really attach to was Abbie’s and Tim’s autistic son, Danny. Although a lot of reviewers have given this book high marks, for me, the book just fell flat. It didn’t provide the element of suspense I was hoping for. I do applaud Delaney, though, for the creativity of combining the two genres and creating a scenario to think about the moral consequences of being able to create a robot such as Abbie.



Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

My Rating: 3 Stars

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Wow this book! This author is quickly turning into one of my favorites. Initially I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the AI element, but it worked for me. I loved all of the twiats and turns and was kept guessing until the end.

I loved how the overall theme of this book is how a mother's love for her child will do whatever it takes to make sure they're taken care of. I've noticed the author includes kiddos with disabilities in at least three of their previous works, and that hits a soft spot for me as well.

When Abbie wakes up, she’s not sure where she is or what happened. She’s laying down in a room with machines, so she thinks she must be in a hospital. She must have been in some sort of accident. Her husband Tim is there beside her. He doesn’t want to tell her at first what happened, but she keeps asking him. Finally he relents. She wasn’t in an accident. She’s not in a hospital.

She’s a robot. Technically, a cobot, a companion robot with artificial intelligence. Tim, a tech genius and owner of a company that had been developing robots for many years, has figured out a way to download all of Abbie’s social media and texts into an artificial brain, so that the AI could become a new version of her, to replace the real Abbie who had gone missing five years previous.

Tim takes cobot Abbie home, to the home where he had lived with the real Abbie, to let her get accustomed to her new reality for a few weeks. It’s here that she meets, Danny again, now 5 years older. Abbie had been alive when he’d been diagnosed with Heller’s syndrome, or childhood degenerative disorder. But she’s been gone for five years. Danny is five years older, but still locked in the developmental disorder that took him over.

A lot had happened in the years since Abbie had disappeared—Tim had been investigated, and later exonerated, as her killer. His company had continued to do research into AI, clearly, her existence proves that. Danny has been in a school that offers therapy for kids like him. And cobot Abbie is expected to adjust to her new reality.

Abbie sorts through the memories she has, of bring an artist who borrowed from tech culture in her sculptures. She remembers her early days as an artist-in-residence at Tim’s company, trying to help the engineers see things more deeply. She goes through Abbie’s books and looks at her art pieces, thinking back through her relationship with Tim. Wondering what went wrong.

But as she’s trying to put together what happened to Abbie, she realizes that there is a present danger in her family’s life. As an AI, she makes many people uncomfortable, but she also understands that she can use that to her advantage. And she’ll need every advantage she can get to figure out where the real Abbie is and to make sure she and Danny can stay safe.

The Perfect Wife is a crazy story of a family in crisis mixed with a tech thriller. Author JP Delaney has packed this novel with surprises. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, he pulls the rug out from under you and you see that the story you thought you were reading is going in a completely different direction. Suddenly, it’s a completely different story, and you’re running to catch up.

I listened to the audio version of this. Narrators Saskia Maarleveld, Graham Halstead, and Euan Morton tell the story in alternating chapters. We get inside cobot Abbie’s head in most of the chapters, but other chapters tell what was happening from the perspective of an insider in Tim’s company. We get the present and the past in different voices, and it helps you stay present in the story despite all the twists. I can’t really explain this without giving too much away, but I want to say that my favorite surprise came through in the audio in a way it didn’t in the written book. For that reason, I definitely recommend this as an audio book. Plus, the narrators are just really good, especially Ms. Maarleveld, who has to convince listeners she is human and not entirely human at the same time. It’s a fascinating performance.

I did find myself bristling at the use of the word “autism.” Author Delaney uses it interchangeably with Heller’s syndrome and childhood degenerative disorder, and it’s said that those with autism lack empathy. I realize that the author does have some personal experience with a child on the autistic spectrum, but I feel like the idea of a spectrum got lost in this story. It was fine when they were specifically talking about Danny, but there were a lot of generalizations that I felt were unfair to many on the autistic spectrum.

Aside from that, I did enjoy this story and the various twists. Watching cobot Abbie go through all the things she had to go through to put the pieces together was fascinating, and it was just quite a ride!

Egalleys for The Perfect Wife were provided by Ballentine Books through NetGalley, with many thanks, but I bought the audio book myself through Audible.

I find this author to be hit or miss for me, I'm afraid.... I realize I'm in the minority here and will keep plugging through their releases so as to not miss a hit. Thanks for the opportunity to review this!

I love JP Delaney! This book pointed to a close future. Where do we draw the line? What makes someone human?

One of my absolute favorite authors! Not even going to pretend that I understood all the science and technology behind the cobots, but hey I didn't understand Ex Machina either and was still thrilled.

Interesting book that didn't quite hit the spot for me but might for someone more into scifi type books. A little bit far fetched & strange for my taste.

Unfortunately, I chose to read this book based on my enjoyment of a previous J. P. Delaney book. However, this one was very different. There is too much discussion on the philosophy of robots and artificial intelligence and since I am not a science fiction fan, this one did not appeal. The characters are well developed and the story was a different twist to the author’s previous style. But for me, I felt like the story dragged.

The ethical issues of artificial intelligence against human conscience was thought-provoking and will have you considering the issues the technology brings. There were exciting moments and a good ending, but it was not appealing to me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for my advanced review copy. All opinions and thoughts are my own.

A few pages in, I was not sure this was a book for me. I had recently read another title by this author that I really enjoyed, so I was a bit disappointed. This story was about a tech genius that had created a cobot (companion robot) in the image of his wife that died 5 years earlier. He had programmed her with AI to continue learning, and gave her empathy to make her more humanlike. This is all a bit too sci-fi for my liking, so I wasn't feeling it. But I didn't give up, and I ended up liking it more than i would have guessed, as the author made you forget (often) that the character was a robot (until reminding you...usually in a jarring way, like having her unzip and remove her skin). There is also a mystery here, and secrets that keep the plot moving. Overall, a decent read, although I was not a fan of the ending (seemed a stretch). Thank you NetGalley and publishers for providing a digital ARC for review.

JP Delaney has quickly become a favorite author. Really great writing, compelling characters and full of twists and turns! I'm definitely a life long fan!

A fast paced read. I appreciated having the dual perspectives as I feel like it makes the books read faster. I was engaged the whole way through.

Oh wow. I don't even know where to start with this one. This was NOTHING like I expected and nothing like anything I've read before. But I liked it. I really did. I liked the switching perspectives, the before and after. And you know what? I really liked Abbie. I don't want to give anything away, but this was part domestic thriller, part science fiction, and part family drama. And yet, it all somehow tied together into something that worked. I loved this.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Love It! This is my favorite book from this author so far. I love the meaning of the book and I love the pace, the story and I appreciatte that this author does his research and delivers something deep, dark but meaningful. I care for the MC and even when I guessed the ending I enjoyed the ride. The writing was entertaining and the way the story was great. Can't wait for the next author's book.

I have thoroughly enjoyed other titles by this author but I did not really like or connect to this one. The plot and characters almost seemed to far fetched and unbelievable to me. I did finish this book but can not say I recommend it.

Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early review copy! I was interested thriller when I discovered it had a science fiction element. It was a great read with some well-crafted twists!

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for a review.

Unfortunately, this is another one of those books that got lost in the TBR pile, and I am sorry it did, because I wish I had read it sooner!

Abbie wakes up in a hospital and has no memory of how she got there or what has happened to her. When her husband Tim explains that she is not exactly in a hospital, she has been dead for 5 years, and she is a robotic replica of herself, she is, to put it mildly, STUNNED! Then the real adventure begins. With memories uploaded from her social media accounts and what Tim knows and remembers, there are big gaps in her memory. She remembers the big stuff - her husband, their child, some of her friends, but she finds that her memory has been carefully curated by her husband, so there are a LOT of things she doesn't know. She is designed to learn, so she sets about learning about this "Abbie" she replicates. And what she finds is not always good.

Told in the third person from several viewpoints, the reader does not always know who is narrating the story, and, it turns out, that is a lot of the fun. The ending is heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and SCARY!!

I didn’t realize this was probably a little more sci-fi than I realized, however, still a thriller and it was wild! I want to point that out as I’m not sure this will be for everyone. This was my first by Delaney, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to go, but I ended up liking it very much. It takes a couple of twists and turns and the ending is nuts and very satisfying. I can’t say too much without giving a lot away, but this one really makes you think about how things could be in the future, and my goodness, it’s terrifying. But Delaney covered all the bases pretty well in here.

I highly recommend the audio on this one, there are two voices / POV’s that the story is told in, one is Abbie’s and the other is her husband’s coworker who represents the team's POV, which is very interesting as we are trying to figure out what is going on. The audiobook does a cool trick at the end that is mind blowing as we are learning a key twist and it was fantastic. So I’m leaving you with that nugget to enjoy.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ecopy to review.

The Perfect Wife is a domestic thriller with a science fiction element thrown in. Abbie Cullen-Scott is the wife of tech titan Tim Scott and the mother to their son Danny who is autistic. As the novel starts, it appears that Abbie is recovering from a tragic accident of some sort as she awakens in a daze of dreams and her memories are unclear and fuzzy.
And that's all I can really say without giving away too much about this twisted tale of perfect love.