Set My Heart to Five is one of the most original and quirky books I have read in a long time. Set in a near future where humans have destroyed most things on Earth (and the moon), this story is narrated by Jared, a bot made to look exactly like a human with one big difference: he has no capacity for feelings. Things become complicated for Jared once he realises that he is starting to experience feelings in spite of his programming and has to learn how to understand them with the help of his new friend Dr Gludenstein and lots of old movies. This brings him to the realisation that he must use his new understanding to write a movie of his own which will finally reconcile humans and bots... and become a fugitive in the process.

I found the book a bit hard to get into initially, particularly as I struggled to follow Jared's unique way of speaking and his constant use of expressions like "10/10" and "I cannot!". Once I got the hang of it though, I found this to be one of the most delightful reads this year. Jared's quest to prove that bots are not all murderous unfeeling machines becomes a touching reflection on what it means to be human and to love, while delicately raising questions around diversity and discrimination.

This book clearly doesn't take itself too seriously and there were several points where I laughed out loud. The parallels between Jared's journey and the movies he enjoys were great fun, and actually made me want to brush up on some classical movies I have yet to watch. One thing I struggled with though was Jared's over-explaining. It was entirely fitting with his character, but ended up feeling repetitive and slowed the book down quite a lot. Part of the middle section felt especially dragging, but the ending more than made up for it. I was having ALL the feelings too!

Overall, this was a great discovery, and I'm glad I stuck with it despite the initial struggle. I laughed, I cried, and I fell in love with this little toaster with a heart.

I received an e-arc of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book in any way. ( )

To enjoy the novel, one must like the robot-narrator's voice. I enjoyed the narrator's voice. The novel is easy to read as the robot spells out his feellings and what happens to him very clearly. I found the romance touching. I also enjoyed the robot's chagrin with humans and his struggle to understand human emotions and habits. I like watching movies and I enjoyed his description of the plot of unnamed, well-known movies. While the robot Brad might not think he was that successful with me as I didn't cry 27 ml of tears, I would tell him that I never became bored with his story and that is not the case for many of the stories I've read. ( )

4 stars for making me laugh out loud... Ha! ( )

It starts quite well, but then it gets sluggy. There are some strange detours throughout, which means our main character wanders around for a time, and his actions aren’t really in service of reaching his goal. Instead it’s a “slice of life” kind of thing where we watch his antics as he does the rom-com stuff, gets advice from a mentor, falls for the trickster’s tricks, and so on.

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. ( )

This is entertaining, funny and poignant. What really stood out to me was how the author used the main character to point out so many of the illogical and ridiculous beliefs and behaviors of people. ( )