17 Church Row by James Carol

          1.5 Stars

On the face of things this book starts out as a fairly standard psychological thriller.  Once close family shattered by a terrible event in the past and they are now trying to pull the threads together and start again.  Because this is a wealthy family they decide to move to a state of the art home whose main selling point seems to be a Koi fish pond right outside a bedroom and a fully integrated "smart speaker" system (think Alexa on steroids).

The problems for me start with the family themselves.  Despite all they have been through I just couldn't dredge any empathy at all up for them.  Because Bella is mute after the tragedy you never really get to know her and as she is always drawn in comparison to her loss you never really get to think of her any other way.  This dilutes anything you may have felt for the little girl and her undoubted PTSD.  Then you have Nikki who is pretty much self-absorbed and although she talks a LOT about only being there for her daughter it is always couched in the ways in which it affects her.  Ethan is pretty much absorbed by his career and that seems to take centre stage in his life whenever he manages to pop up in the book.  Basically pretty much a 1950s family set up that felt incredibly alien these days.

The whole thing just felt incredibly clunky and poorly executed.  The plot is extremely straightforward and the only thing that you really have to keep your brain ticking over for is which of the support cast has been given a little starring role this time, in deed they may even have been given a whole chapter.

When you first start reading this book, the first thing you think is that Alice sounds awfully like HAL.  Sadly, once you have made that link in your brain it is really hard to shake it off and although the author goes through a lot of hoops to misdirect the reader and tries clever narrative tricks to distract you from this thought it is always there.  This really does prevent any real enjoyment of the book because that thought is in your mind the whole way through and it, ultimately, diffuses any attempt at building tension or distracting the reader from what is, undoubtedly, supposed to be a shocking revelation.

To be perfectly honest I feel like the author was trying to snatch up the mantle of Michael Crichton and write about something that is scientifically possible if not entirely plausible and then run it to it's most extreme conclusion.  Unfortunately, where Mr Crichton had impeccable research behind him that made you think "hmmm, you know what..." this felt like the only research done in to the field of A.I. was reading a manufacturer's blurb for a smart speaker system.

Although I hate to be scathing, it really was great for getting me off to sleep.