Title: Girl Parts
Author: John M. Cusick
Summary: What makes a human? And if you can’t feel anything, are you no better than a robot? David Sun has dissociative disorder – meaning he feels sort of detached from reality. Or at least that’s what his parents decide when the learn that he, along with 700 other teens watched a live web feed of a local girl committing suicide. Because his dad is a rich and famous tech developer, David is afforded an opportunity to try a radical new treatment: He is issued a Companion named Rose. She is gorgeous robot programmed and designed only to care for and be pleasing to him. David is thrilled even though when he moves to fast for her preprogrammed ‘intimacy clock,’ Rose is designed to shock him with electricity.
Charlie has also been diagnosed with dissociative disorder, but he couldn’t be more different from classmate David: He and his father live off the grid and Charlie is a loner who doesn’t understand other people. When David rejects Rose after he learns about her lack of ‘girl parts,’ it is Charlie who finds her, alone and lost in the woods, pining for her lost master. How Rose changes both David and Charlie’s lives is the center of this sharp story about the nature of friendship and love in the digital age.
Who will like this book: Mature readers interested in near-future set fantasy and/or quirky love stories.
If you like this, try this: Feed by M.T. Anderson. Be More Chill by Ned Vizzini.
Recommended by: Nicole, Teen Librarian