Sheena Snow

Sparked is about a time when robots are used in the everyday workplace and you can buy them for your home. They even
look human. The government also has a secret agenda and they kidnap people. The girl of the story is targeted to be
kidnapped but is rescued by their house robot but finds out he is really part of a unit of secret robots sent to save her. She is
sent off with other robots for her safety. She has no love for robots prior to this but gets to understand and see that these
robots have feelings and emotions like she does. They also have choices. I won't give away any spoilers but she finds out
many secrets about the robots. She is kidnapped from the robots and finally released after long periods of torture and
attempted brainwashing. She won't give in but is released anyway. Her home life prior to this was lonely and she felt
unloved, and dating was downhill. With the robots she fell in love, had friends, and felt excepted. The book is full of great
developed characters, good plot, but the ending was a let down. I enjoyed it up to the end. I would have given it a 5 star but the reason for the kidnapping seemed odd and the ending was out of place with the character.… (mehr)

The reason I chose this read was because of the blurb. It looked like it would be a good sci-fi story and I always like reading about robots that search/want to be human (you can thank Star Trek's Data for that).

I wanted to like this one, really I did. And there were moments that were good. But so many were not. The confusing POV, the internal stream of Vienna's thoughts which were a jumbled mess, and the constant shifting of locations gave me whiplash.

Character development was uneven though I felt that the robots had more depth to them than the main character. The concept of human cyborgs is not new and I wish the author had done more with it.

Would I recommend this book? I'm on the fence. There is a sequel. I might reserve judgment until after I read it. Or I might not. I'm not sure.… (mehr)

I wanted to give this book a good score. This is my first book I have gotten for free in exchange for a review and I wanted to love it. Sadly I cannot say that I did.
The first half of the book was at least interesting. It was kind of like McDonald's chicken nuggets, addicting even though it doesn't really taste good. During the first half of the book, I read obsessively, even though I didn't understand what was happening half of the time and I never really liked the main character. Mainly I was impressed that there wasn't insta love. But it turned out that I was wrong. There was insta love, the main guy just didn't appear until later on. But I was willing to put up with insta love-because we all secretly love it. But at the halfway point things took a turn for the worse.
It was like the author wanted to add plot to the story so it wouldn't be just another teen romance, but she didn't really know how to do that so she just randomly tortured the MC and NEVER explained why it was happening.
Then the worst happened. The MC is released and returned to her love, who has now taken to calling her BABY. UGH. And if that isn't bad enough he calls her that like every five seconds, at the beginning and end of each sentence. Gross.
And briefly a word about the "steaminess". IT was ridiculous. At one point they were running away from bad guys, hiding in a tree, and they suddenly start making out. Gross again. There are many more examples of this type of thing happening, but I can't bring myself to relive those moments.
The only characters in the whole story that I remotely liked were Robotatoille and Bonnie. They seemed interesting. But they barely had any back story, so there is no knowing if I would still like them once I got to know them better.
Oh well. Perhaps this is exactly the kind of book some people love. It just wasn't for me.
Just to be clear: I am super grateful for the opportunity to read this book. I finished it even though I didn't love it, or understand the plot for half of the time. I think the author has potential. But maybe not with dystopian societies perhaps, because those require a lot of world building that was sadly lacking in this book.… (mehr)