Thank you Netgalley for this arc!

AI? S-E-X doll? A crumbling marriage? This should have landed for me. It didn’t. I did dnf

Thank you Little Brown for the ARC. IYKYK my reviews are always honest.

Writing: my fave type of pretentious wanker prose | Plot: didn't need the Zoey stuff | Ending: me heart

TW: miscarriages, child SA

MY OPINION

Another book featured in my list of most anticipated books of 2024 that I discussed on YouTube (shameless plug).

From the premise, it sounds like this will be similar to Annie Bot but from the perspective of the wife who discovers her husband's AI-powered sex doll. Welp, that was not the case whatsoever. I think this was packaged up as an AI companion book to capitalize on the popularity of ChatGPT etc but ultimately Zoey was pretty insignificant to the overall plot. If you removed Zoey from this book, it still works. In fact, it would've worked much better.

This is not a sci-fi book. This is not a thriller. This is a stressy n depressy (lite). If you liked The Loyalties, this is RIGHT up your alley. Same writing style, lots of bit-sized scenes, and minimal hand-holding. The timelines flip flops around and aren't clearly marked so keep your wits about you. Other than the weak ass Zoey subplot, this was STRONG. If you like books about how your childhood can fk you up nice and good for the future and basically ruin any chance at a happy and healthy romantic relationship, this is for you. Similar to My Dark Vanessa, It's also a great exploration of how there's not 'standard' for how CSA victims react.

Unfortunately I think the marketing will result in a lot of negative reviews. Not the author's fault if the publisher chose to market it this way, therefore I'm giving it 4 stars. I'm definitely interested to read her other works when I want to get in my pretentious wanker bag.

PROS AND CONS

Pros: loved the writing, the short scenes, and the themes explored, emotions were felt, no hand-holding

Cons: should've eliminated Zoey altogether and just replaced her with your bog-standard cheating—the story would've been much tighter and more focused. This is NOT about AI or companion bots. This is about sad human shit. Enjoy!!

Thank you NetGalley, Sarah Crossan, and Little, Brown and Company for allowing me to read an advanced copy of Hey, Zoey. I received an advanced reader copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

What an absolutely intriguing, thought provoking book. Dolores finds an AI sex doll, Zoey, that her husband keeps hidden away in their garage. This discovery leads to Dolores going through her past to uncover why she is the way she is in the present.

Each thought about the past is broken between different segments in which the present also comes into play. There is no direct timeline or order in which these thoughts occur. Everything is sort of jumbled around, yet it makes sense how it all strings together in the end.

Zoey makes Dolores question so much, even though this is not the intention of Zoey. The delicate approach to the overall theme played really well into the unique writing style the author used.

I was really disappointed with Hey, Zoey, but I will admit that it is partially my fault. The major problem was wrong expectations.

The premise sounded fantastic. Interactions between humans and AI have been done to death, but I’ve never come across this particular premise— the interaction between a woman and her husband’s sex robot. I was extremely interested in what the book would have to say.

Perhaps I did too much expecting from this book; I went into it anticipating a certain type of story-- a sci-fi/speculative fiction about the ethics of having sex with what is essentially a mindlessly-compliant woman --and what I actually got was a contemporary about a woman using her present to confront her past.

Zoey wasn’t as important a character as I wanted her to be. I think she could have just been a doll, minus the AI aspect, and the same message would have come across. I was really interested in seeing the conversations between these two women now that AI are coming up with intelligent, complex responses, but that was never the point of this book.

So... what about the actual story, not the one I thought I should be reading?

I think I would have liked it better if I went in with the right expectations, but it would not have been more than a 3-star read for me. There was way too much of Dolores and Gavin having these weird awkward conversations about nothing. It made me think of someone trying to emulate Sally Rooney, which always comes across as weird to me (see Cleopatra and Frankenstein).

There was also a lot of darting back and forth between the past and present, sometimes in very short snippets, to the extent that I often found it jarring. Also-- unless I am very confused, which is possible --the flashbacks did not appear to be in chronological order, making it quite difficult to follow sometimes.

I much preferred Crossan's Here Is the Beehive.

I thought this was really well written. I wished flashback portion flowed a little better and that Delores and Zoey's kinship was introduced a little sooner. Too much time was spent on her and David having these non conversations. I had a felling that the Gavin thing was a thing and I can appreciate that it was never said outloud.