You’ve heard of The Bachelor.  Now imagine it with a Synth woman competing against her human counterparts to capture an eligible bachelor’s heart.  Jenna Satterthwaite’s phenomenal debut novel Made for You brings this futuristic idea to life … but will this unconventional love story have a happily ever after?

Julia, one of only three Synth women in the world, is seemingly human in every sense of the word, apart from her body being built with robotics instead of cells and DNA.  Julia, implanted with a donor’s eggs, can even become pregnant and have a child, and if you didn’t know any better, you would never guess she isn’t human.  Which is why she is able to compete on the reality TV dating show, The Bachelor, and no one is the wiser.  When Julia makes the choice to tell bachelor Josh that she is, in fact, not human, she fears that he will send her home. But Josh can’t deny that there is something between him and Julia … she was, after all, made specifically for Josh by Andy Wekstein, Julia’s creator.  

Now, a couple of years post-Bachelor, Julia and Josh are happily married with a new baby Annaleigh.  They are living in seemingly marital bliss in a rural Indiana, but even there, they can’t escape the harassment they receive by people who do not believe Synths should exist.  Their lives take an even darker turn, however, when Josh leaves one night for a hiking trip and never returns.  Julia soon finds herself as the prime suspect in his disappearance, targeted by the town’s Synth-hating sheriff.  Can Julia put together the pieces of the mystery and find Josh before she finds it’s too late … not only for him, but also for herself?

Contemporary novels featuring robots are quickly becoming a favorite of mine.  I love when the concept of robots is introduced into real-world settings and the robots are given the opportunity to interact with society in a relatable, accessible way.  This may very well be our near future with the recent surge in AI capabilities, and I find stories featuring humans and robots co-existing to be fascinating.  This is the first robot story I have read that falls into the suspense category, and I love the questions that it raises about the culpability of robots when confronted with a crime.  

Told in dual storylines, featuring the past and present, Made for You slowly unravels the mysteries of what happened to Josh that fateful night.  It takes us back to Julia and Josh’s days on The Bachelor and shows the intricacies of their complicated relationship up until Josh’s disappearance.  The present day storyline follows Julia as she tries to unravel the mystery of what happened to Josh, while also attempting to clear her name.

This tightly-woven novel had twists and turns that I did not see coming, and the perfectly composed ending where everything came together was the icing on the cake for me.  I sat back in awe at Satterthwaite’s cleverness as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place in my mind.  A nicely done romance-suspense-sci-fi hybrid by an up-and-coming new author!

Recommended for fans of Annie Bot.