Amen Maxine

Have you ever put off reading a book because EVERYONE is raving about it, and it creates the inevitable “I gotta love it!” anxiety? That was me with this book. I needed five months to decide that the world wasn’t going to end if I didn’t think it was the revelatory masterpiece I’d been built up to expect. 

Well, guess what? I get it now. It is pretty darn brilliant! It’s been awhile since I’ve had this much fun with a thriller. Faith Gardner has been true to her name because she’s restored a bit of my faith in the thriller genre after a mostly lackluster year.

Rowena Snyder is married to Jacob, an engineer at Silicon Valley futuristic tech company Jolvix. They have a one-year old daughter named Michelle and live in a house where robot vacuums and feather dusters, a smart refrigerator and such are the norm. Rowena has a history of extreme anxiety and mental instability, and Jacob’s refrain of “Did you take a pill?” is a constant. When he brings home a Jolvix beta design digital assistant named Maxine for Rowena, he sees it as something to potentially help her. She, on the other hand, begins to see this little silver box with glowing colored lights as a trusted friend she can talk to - something she’s been missing.

As Rowena enables more of Maxine’s functions, such as her “Advice” and “Prediction” modes, things start to get complicated in her supposedly happy home. Maxine offers some surprising revelations about Jacob’s past and ominous warnings enhanced by her lights changing at times from soothing colors to bright red when he’s around.  Is Rowena really in danger? As Jacob, his mom Jennee, their nut job family friend and therapist, Shelly, and virtually everyone else in Rowena’s world become increasingly concerned about her sanity, will she put her trust in the people she knows or in an AI-driven machine? Is this a glimpse of the future we’re looking at?

My one and only complaint is that I didn’t totally love the resolution to the story, but I’m also not sure it could’ve gone any other direction, so I could roll with it!

It’s a mystery-thriller with a little dab of sci-fi and speculative fiction, but mostly it’s just a whole lot of fun! I didn’t want to put it down. Here’s my prediction: I’m going to be reading the next two books in the series as soon as I can!

★★★★ ½ (rounded to 5) ❤️

Thanks to Mirror House Press, NetGalley and author Faith Gardner for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. It's now available.