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For fans of Fredrik Backman and Gail Honeyman, a delightfully entertaining, deceptively poignant debut novel about a humanlike bot named Jared, whose emotional awakening leads him on an unforgettable quest for connection, belonging and possibly even true love Jared works as a dentist in small-town Michigan. His life is totally normal, except for one thing. He is a bot engineered with human DNA to look and act like a real person. One day at a screening of a classic movie, Jared feels a strange sensation around his eyes. Everyone knows that bots can't feel emotions, but as the theater lights come on, Jared is almost certain he's crying. Confused, he decides to watch more old movies to figure out what's happening. The process leads to an emotional awakening that upends his existence. Jared, it turns out, can feel. Overcome with a full range of emotions, and facing an imminent reset, Jared heads west, determined to forge real connections. He yearns to find his mother, the programmer who created him. He dreams of writing a screenplay that will change the world. Along the way, he might even fall in love. But a bot with feelings is a dangerous proposition, and Jared's new life could come to an end before it truly begins. Delectably entertaining and deceptively moving, Set My Heart to Five is a profound exploration of what makes us human and a love letter to outsiders everywhere.… (more)
User reviews
The main plot is that a dentist-servant robot starts to get feelings. He’s not sure what to do about it, but he knows if he tells anyone, he’ll be erased. So what’s his solution? Go to Hollywood and write a screenplay that will make others stop thinking of bots as inhuman automatons. I guess he’s trying to pull an “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”?.
This is supposed to be a comedy book, but the humor grates because he keeps telling the same jokes over and over. I guess it’s supposed to be because it doesn’t fully understand sarcasm or irony. Which makes me wonder how he’s supposed to write a screenplay. Let alone THE screenplay. But I cannot take one more “Can you guess what XYZ is? You cannot! Humans!”
But it’s still heartfelt. It plays out pretty much how you’d expect it to so don’t expect any surprises. Plus the robots are barely robots–they pass for humans with no difficulty. So don’t come in looking for any cool robot stuff.