【 IN THE LIVES OF PUPPETS 】

Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Young Adult
Author: T.J. Klune
Published: April 2023
Publisher: Tor
Pages: 420 (hardback)

I’m surprised that I didn’t completely love this more – but while I found this 10 levels of hilarious, and could read an infinite number more books featuring Nurse Ratched and Rambo, there were a few things that I was less a fan of.

So all in all, this balances at a 3/5 for me.

This is my first TJ Klune book – and the writing was chirpy and funny in a way that still has me looking forward to trying more of their books. I certainly found this to be wonderfully creative in the way the OG story of Pinocchio is retold without it being too close to the nose, and I admit I’m a real sucker for Pinocchio retellings because they’re far less common.

However, the romantic storyline of this totally ruined it for me. It felt both ick and unnecessary. I get that overall, the themes were super wholesome – but without ruining the specifics for people who haven’t read it yet – let’s just say the way the age gap came across to me (even though that probably was not a thing) made me go eurgh. It just wasn’t a pairing I could really get behind, nor one I wanted to.

And unfortunately for me, that tinted the rest of the book once it really took off. I felt that the interesting and unique plot got a bit lost to the romantic plot from the mid-to-halfway mark onwards, which was a great shame. Because the romantic plot doesn’t really have the guts to it to call it a ‘plot’. It made me feel that I could’ve stopped reading around page 100 or 150 and I would’ve got the gist of the story just the same as reading it through to the end.

Negativity aside, this was enjoyable because the humour was laugh-out-loud funny and Rambo was the best thing to happen to the literary world ever – seriously, he’s hilarious. I’ll never look at a vacuum the same way. So 3 stars from me for a good read overshadowed by an ick romance.

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Title: In the Lives of Puppets
Author: T.J. Klune
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In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots–fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.

The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio-a past spent hunting humans.

When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.

Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?