The Plus One

April 1, 2019
Archer’s upbeat but unsatisfying debut attempts to take on 20-something Silicon Valley dating and the idea of romantic perfection. Socially awkward roboticist Kelly Suttle, pressured by her family to find an appropriate date for her sister’s wedding, steals supplies from her office to create android Ethan as a temporary boyfriend. But Ethan turns out to be gorgeous, devoted, and charming, and she becomes attached to having him in her life. Kelly, however, struggles to create a functional care assistant robot for her job, which is baffling given the effortlessness with which she manufactures Ethan. Ethan’s public mistakes are played for a quick laugh, but he doesn’t get a growth arc as a character. Archer wastes her central idea, only telling the tired story of a woman pushed by everyone to find a man already, and fails to dig into the natural humor of the uncanny valley or the absurdity of trying to live with someone perfect. An essential goodness of heart shines through, but it’s not enough to save this uneven story. Agent: Sheila Crowley, Curtis Brown (U.K.).

May 1, 2019
Gorgeous, thoughtful, intelligent, sexy, supportive--Ethan is everything Kelly has ever wanted in a man. Too bad he's a robot. Pressured to find a date for her sister's wedding, robotics engineer Kelly Suttle stumbles upon the perfect solution: She builds her own. Like Victor Frankenstein, Kelly cobbles her creature together from mismatched parts, but hers are found in a highly advanced lab whose real goal is not to offer parts for Kelly's private project but to market the first caregiver AI: a robot intended to provide meaningful companionship to lonely or ill people and even pass for human in close interactions. The trouble starts when Kelly is too good at her own job: She not only gives Ethan access to the entire internet, but also spends every day with him--with nearly fatal repercussions: She falls in love with her creation. In her debut novel, Archer concocts an endearingly unlucky-at-love heroine, although one beset with the social awkwardness of the stereotypical engineer: Relentlessly reminded by her mother that, at 29, her marriageable days are waning fast, Kelly dreads every family dinner and blind date. And although her best friend, Priya, is a man magnet, Kelly is more likely to get pickpocketed than picked up at a nightclub. With Archer's wry tone, Kelly's social flubs set up her fall into AI love. And while she is surprised to find herself falling for Ethan, the reader spotted it long ago, when Kelly chose the fancy lavender eyes instead of the utilitarian brown for her plus one. Indeed, reading between the lines reveals that in assembling Ethan, Kelly has attended to rather intimate details, making some of the scenes between the two a bit uncomfortable. But the real question is: Will Kelly be able to turn Ethan off after the wedding? Or will robot love spiral out of control? A fun story that will appeal to geeks and beachgoers alike.

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Starred review from June 1, 2019
Kelly, a brilliant engineer, is not only great at designing robots but also has a real knack for programming practically perfect artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, her skills are not what she needs to fit in with her family, including a wedding-planning mother and a sister ready to walk down the aisle. Kelly has to find the perfect wedding date, and none of the match-ups orchestrated by family, friends, or websites are doing the job. She just doesn't have the time or patience to deal with this as she's all wrapped up in creating a companion-type robot to win a competition. Working overtime, she decides to turn her robot into a passable date for the wedding, and ends up using the profile of her dream man that she wrote for one of the dating sites, thus creating Ethan. He is the ideal man: kind, caring, thoughtful, gorgeous, and able to charm her mother as well as give Kelly the confidence she has always lacked. Readers who think they don't like romance and those who think they don't like science fiction may be astonished to discover themselves loving the combination in Archer's irresistible, unputdownable, comic, debut romance novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)