This book is so many things and addresses so many huge ideas that it is virtually impossible to distill it into a summary or even a relatively coherent explanation of why I loved it. It is beautiful. Heartbreaking. Funny. Depressing. Wonderful. On the surface it is about a man named Victor, his father Gio, and their friends. But going deeper, it is about the nature of creation and friendship, love and destruction. It is a quest, both to retrieve a missing person and to find what it means to exist. Honestly, it is too much to explain - just read it and then let's talk about it, okay?

Thank you Tor Books and NetGalley for early access to In the Lives of Puppets.

🎵”Heaven, I’m in heaven.”🎵

Oh Mr. Klune. The way you write these weird, interesting, unique misfit characters that just grab on to my heart and never let go is just absolutely beyond!

Rambo, Nurse Ratched, Gio, Hap and Victor have forever places in my heart and in my mind just like the characters in Cerulean Sea and Whispering Door.

This is one of my shortest reviews because I just don’t have the words to describe how much the humanity, kindness, and togetherness of this book and the two mentioned above me What an impact the words you use and the characters you create and the worlds you imagine make on readers.

I got an advanced digital copy but I now will go buy a physical copy so this book can live next to your others on my forever shelf.

Thank you to Netgalley for this advanced copy and most importantly thank you to TJ Klune for…well…everything!

“Be it man or machine, Victor thought, to love something meant loving the ghost inside, to be haunted by it. Humanity -that nebulous concept he didn't always understand had lived and died by their creations.
Perhaps Victor would too, one day, a final lesson in what it meant to exist.”

//

TJ Klune’s newest novel is a queer retelling of Pinocchio with it’s own futuristic sci-fi spin. It was a sweet story telling of found family, acceptance, forgiveness, and humanity. It also tackles the extremely topical discussion of the impact of robots/AI on our world and what could happen if they became conscious.

In The Lives of Puppets has the quirky, diverse characters that readers have come to expect with a Klune novel. Overall, this story was enjoyable but doesn’t beat Cerulean Sea or Whispering Door!

thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

(I’m trying to think of the right words after reading this book. I think all my TJ Klune reviews probably start this way.)

I usually read romcoms. Happy, happy romcoms. But I love how TJ Klune writes, so I keep going back for more. His deeply descriptive settings, his unique and lovable characters, his subtle lessons for humanity… his blatant lessons for humanity. In the Lives of Puppets is no different.

You can read the synopsis and get the drift of what the book is about, and I don’t want to drop any spoilers, so I’ll just say this… read this book if you enjoyed Under the Whispering Door and The House in the Cerulean Sea. It may not have beat Cerulean Sea as my favorite Klune novel, but… it’s really good and I couldn’t wait to see how it ended.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review. Watch for In the Lives of Puppets to come out on April 25, 2023!

TJ Klune, I love you for this. Everything about this book was perfect. This made me audibly laugh more than any book I’ve picked up in a long time. The dialogue was absolutely insane, and I could sit and read the banter between Nurse Ratched and Rambo for hours. A unique, heartfelt, and devastating story that I’ll think about for a long time. I want to give this book a hug.

If there’s one thing TJ Klune’s gonna do, it’s leave you with a tear in your eye. What a beautifully told story of hope, resilience, legacy, and what it means to be human. While this is billed as a Pinocchio retelling, I would say it’s only that on the surface, but it’s not screaming Pinocchio at every turn and is definitely so much more. I absolutely ADORED the characters. Particularly the cynical, sadistic Nurse Ratched, and the adorable, wholesome Rambo. I promise you will fall in love with them too.

ITLOP didn’t leave me a gooey blob like The House in the Cerulean Sea or a blubbering mess like Under the Whispering Door, but it struck a chord with me nonetheless. Keep writing, TJ, I’ll keep reading!

Klune’s writing style and wit really shines through in this book. The characters, especially Nurse Ratched and Rambo, are true gems and add much needed humorous elements. The character conversations can be very funny and endearing. Unlike “Cerulean Sea,” this book tends to drag a bit and could have benefited from some streamlining of certain story elements. The biggest reason I’m giving this a 4 instead of a 5 is that, without giving away spoilers, I felt that the romantic element was…very awkward. I felt super uncomfortable with it for a reason I can’t put my finger on. It just seemed icky to me and I cringed a lot any time that facet of the story was referenced.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor for an ARC of this book!

There aren’t enough glowing words to express how much I love this story! Part sci-if, part family drama with such great world building and strong characters. There’s nothing negative I can say about this one.
Gio Lawson builds a house in the middle of the woods and invents a sarcastic nurse machine called Nurse Ratched and a small people pleasing vacuum called Rambo. One day a couple appears out of nowhere and leaves a baby with Gio, never to be seen or heard from again. Geo thinks it is a gift from the universe for his years of loneliness and raises him as his son, Victor.
Gio is an inventor and Victor, now aged 22, enjoys going to the dump and finding parts of abandoned robots and rebuilding them. He rebuilds an android they name HAP, without realizing the dark past that HAP shares with Gio.
Vic and the Gang have to save his father, who has been taken to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams to be reprogrammed and in the process, Vic has to deal with his feelings for HAP.
I loved the found family and the fun banter between the characters was a treasure to enjoy. TJ Klune knows how to get to my heart and he has done it again.
Thanks to Tor Books and NetGalley for this eArc in exchange for my review.

This book yall. 👏🏻⁣
I was lucky enough to get an eARC and audio ARC of this fantastic book and went back and forth reading and listening and it was fabulous.⁣
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The narrator for this was chefs kiss amazing! The way in which every single character had their own unique voice and even robotic voices was fabulous. This story was brought to life and I didn’t want to stop listening. ⁣
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The subtle messages woven throughout this story on being kind, giving people second chances. Just because you’re broken doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a second chance or a chance at a different life. And so many more were just so beautiful. ⁣
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This book has so much heart and soul. Each character has their own personality and struggles. They may be robots but they each teach such beautiful lessons and are a family in their own way and can rely on one another.⁣
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This had Pinocchio and Wizard of Oz vibes. Vic and his friends on a journey to find his dad. The robot vacuum finding courage when he’s usually afraid. Nurse ratchet having sociopathic tendencies finding empathy, once HARP now HAP, a robot made to harm humans, now has a heart and adores Vic. ⁣
This was such a creative story with brilliant narration. I adored it. ⁣
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

TJ Klune is one of those authors that just warms my heart. In the Lives of Puppets starts off as a fairytale and quickly becomes a mysterious journey on the path to finding family. The language is beautiful and from the moment the vacuum robot Rambo made himself a penis, I was hooked. The snark is strong with Ratched and Rambo is sweet, but Victor is the lost boy in the woods searching for home that we can all relate to.

4.5 stars

I'm so absolutely honored to have gotten an early copy of this book. TJ Klune is a master of the found family, and for warming my heart through the power of his words.

This was a beautiful, futuristic, fantastical Pinocchio retelling. Nurse Ratched and Rambo made me genuinely laugh out loud, and will probably be my favorite characters of the year. I adored Vic and his personal growth and bravery.

I would recommend this book hands down to anyone looking for a pick-me-up. What an absolutely delightful journey this was.

I was fully entertained, loved meeting all the unique and magical characters, and loved the message of found family, loyalty, and resilience. It would make a great animated movie!

If you plan to read it, I strongly recommend the audio version. Daniel Henning gives each character an entire WARDROBE of personality with each voice.

[Thank you Tor-Forge and NetGalley for the e-Arc!]

In the Lives of Puppets was such a charming read! If you grew up with fairy tales and enjoy sci-fi, I definitely recommend giving this book a chance. It's a Pinnochio (the original story, not the Disney version) retelling with lovable characters and a compelling plot. I mean, who wouldn't want to read a Hero's Journey set in a dystopian tech future?

I found the book a bit hard to get into in the beginning because it was pretty slow-paced. However, I could not put it down once things started picking up and the exposition concluded.

This was my first TJ Klune book, and I'll have to read some of his other works!

I had a digital review copy of this e-book but waited with crossed fingers, hoping to snag an advanced listening copy of the audiobook. Success! Narrator Henning is BRILLIANT (as he was in THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA). Each character is hilariously voiced and drawn like the funniest cartoon.

In a flipped script of Pinnochio, we have one human (Victor) surrounded by puppets (robots and androids). There’s lots of love and acceptance, loads of witty banter, and a sprinkling of surprising sexual innuendo. (They feel like an inside joke for the parents watching a cartoon if that makes sense.)

I was utterly entertained, loved meeting all the unique and magical characters, and appreciated the message of found family, loyalty, and resilience. It would make a fantastic animated movie! Someone should call Pixar.

If you plan to read it, I strongly recommend the audio version. Daniel Henning gives each character an entire WARDROBE of personality with each voice.

Thanks, NetGalley, MacMillan Audio, and Tor Books, for the ALC and DRC.

In the Lives of Puppets is a Pinocchio-retelling for science fiction fans and it is worth every second that I spent reading it. While this is a story full of a special little found family adventuring after the robot apocalypse, it it also an exploration into identity and what the human experience is at its very core. Some of the silly little machines in this book feel more human than some humans I know, and the only human character's wrestling with his humanity and what it means is so poignant.
The novel follows the same formula as Klune's other incredibly popular novels, and it is a great formula. The novel takes characters on adventures while simultaneously being so incredibly cozy and heartwarming. I think this may actually be my favorite of the books Klune has published recently, and I am already considering reading this again.
I especially recommend this to those who enjoyed the Monk and Robot books by Becky Chambers, as the feeling is quite similar.

This book is absolute perfection. I adored this story and it’s my favorite yet by Klune. It’s so hilarious, heartwarming, sensitive and makes you really think about humanity. Nurse Ratched and Rambo were some of my favorite characters ever and their banter I made me laugh so hard I cried at times.

This book came to me at a time that I desperately needed a good, happy, uplifting and funny story and I’m so grateful for getting a chance to listen as an early release. TJ Klune can do no wrong in my eyes. This is my favorite book so far this year.

Thank you to Netgalley and Tor for an ARC of this beautiful story. Preordering now

Why is TJ Klune so darn good?! He can make even the coldest heart melt with his endearing storytelling. This book, a sort of queer re-telling of Pinocchio, is just plain wonderful. He embodied robots (flipping robots!) with emotions and enough human behavior for you to really get to know them. And they're androids!
Giovanni Lawson, human-adjacent robot inventor, created this strange little home that looks straight out of the Swiss Family Robinson. He lives there with Nurse Ratchet, a sadistic medical machine, Rambo, a neurotic vacuum and his human son, Victor. Things start to go a bit sideways when Victor salvages HAP (hysterically angry puppet) from a salvage yard. Then the adventure really begins and Victor finds out the awful past that exists between his father, Gio and HAP.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for this e-arc.*

Under the Whispering Door came into my life just when I needed it, that I jumped at the chance to review his newest book.

This was a combination of Pinocchio and Frankenstein, with some flavor of Wizard of Oz. Deep in a lonely forest is a family made up of machines and a human working together. When they discover an amnesiac android in the forest, they bring him home to repair him. Only for their idyllic life to be upturned when old secrets start to come out.

I wanted to love this so much. A sci fi retelling of Pinocchio? I was all in. And there was a lot to like about it. The characters, especially Gio and Victor and Hap, were charming and easy to like. The soft sci fi setting was easy to get into. And there were fun little references scattered throughout the book.

And there's a particularly timely discussion of what happens when the robots we design learn more than we want them to do. What happens when the robots and the AIs start to make decisions on their own? Spoilers, it doesn't turn out great for us.

The problem was that I wanted more. I wanted more depth to the characters, more exploration of the sci fi aspects of this world, and more development of the romance when it started. Everything felt a little flat and shallow. Nurse Ratched and Rambo felt like characters there to be comedic effect, with oddly sexual jokes coming from robots.

And most disappointing of all was the ending. I felt let down and unsatisfied. I wanted to see what happens because of Vic's choices that he makes. It's difficult to describe what I wanted without spoiling the ending. We get glimpses of this huge world that Vic's decisions would affect, and we don’t see any of it.

If Under the Whispering Door hadn't been so perfectly timed in my life, I would have enjoyed this better. I came to this with too high expectations. But it was an enjoyable read, and I'm looking forward to what comes next from Klune.

Many thanks to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for this ARC!

3.5 rounded down
All in all, I enjoyed this book. Nurse Ratched and Rambo were so funny and I loved the banter between them. I also loved the discussion on anxiety and mental illness throughout the book, specifically illustrated through Rambo’s character. I thought the story was enjoyable and put me in mind of a Disney cartoon (which makes sense as it is a rendition of Picnocchio). This being said, there were two things about the book I wasn’t wild about.
I felt the story took too long to actually get started. The whole first part of the book and basically setting up the story and it takes up the first 50% of the book. Though I loved the getting to know the characters, I was constantly wondering when the main plot line was going to start.
The second thing is that I felt Nurse Ratched was too forced. She put me in mind of Talia from House by the Cerulean sea, but he dialogue seemed more forced.
Truthfully, I think my major Hangup with this book is that I was constantly comparing it to House by the Cerulean Sea, which is my all-time favorite, and Klune was definitely not trying to make this story similar to Cerulean Sea. I would describe Cerulean Sea as being more cozy/slice of life whereas this book was darker with more adventure and a more complex plot.

This was my first TJ Klune. I thought it was great. The story had many elements from other stories going on. When I was reading the book I was thinking of the movie The Brave Little Toaster. There’s one part where Nurse Ratched reminds me of Elektra from Pose where she first meets Hap and they are trying to talk to him and keep him in line. The book is about friendship and family and the extent one goes to save them.