I really enjoyed In The Lives of Puppets. I mean, it had robots with anxiety! What is not to love? Also, the twist retelling of Pinocchio was fun - but I really liked it for the rep. And the robots. You can’t forget them. 

 

Look, the story and writing were fine. Cute and well done, if not groundbreaking, with an ending I saw coming before the book got out of the prologue. But the asexual “romance” jokes that I actually found funny - that was something special. Even just seeing it talked about so openly. 

 

The anxiety rep in a little vacuum robot was probably cliche, but some cliches are worth sticking around. I’m a little torn on the psychopath robot as that is a real psychological disorder that I’m not sure worked or not. I don’t have enough frame of reference to say either way. 

 

But Victor was neurodivergent. Dare I say autistic? I normally hate unnamed autism rep. It is usually so poorly done. But this rep was amazing. I would be surprised if sensitivity readers were not used in this book, which is awesome.