[Review] True Life in Uncanny Valley - Deb Caletti

Summary: Eleanor, like so many others, is used to watching her famous father from afar. To the world, Hugo Harrison is the brilliant and charismatic tech genius whose AI inventions seem to create a new, better reality. But to Eleanor, whose mother had an affair with Hugo years ago, he is something even more intriguing, and dangerous—a secret. 

When Eleanor’s spying leads her to a posting for a live-in summer nanny job for Hugo's young son—her half-brother—she knows she has to apply. This is finally her chance to learn about her father, his family, and the life that could have been hers. She only has to do one thing:  become someone else. With just a few well-placed lies, Eleanor is catapulted into an unfamiliar, intoxicating whirlwind of money and ego, and into a new romance with a cute boy who works for Hugo. But in a place where image is everything and reality can be rewritten, is anything real—even the Harrisons themselves?

Caught between her own secrets and the ones she’s uncovering about her father and his latest invention, Eleanor faces a question that technology can't answer: what is your true self, and how do you know when you find her? (Pub Date: Mar 18 2025)

 

Maybe I didn't fall in love with the story, but this is a memorable book for its style.

3.5 rounded up to 4.

Eleanor never felt close to her mother and sister and maybe that's why she's been stalking the famous father who never really treated her like a daughter. Suddenly, a big chance to be even closer to him; his new wife finds her at the pool and hires her to nanny her son with Eleanor's father without knowing they're actually siblings.

I love Eleanor's voice, her friends, her universe. The descriptions of her father's mansion also invite a lot of curiosity, even without the plot of his secret project. In general, I loved each character the author wanted me to and despised all the ones she didn't want me to like.

I think one of my problems with the read was the tone. It derives from Eleanor's personality but it also made it childish, while the themes were much more mature than that. This always made me frown. I would have loved it for a story with the content it makes you expect, though. My biggest problem was probably how the book made me expect more of the development. It wasn't even that I had any big guess that never came true; I just wish it didn't bring us to such a simple conclusion. The eeriness behind all Hugo's inventions and life story made me sure something much bigger was coming, and also excited to know what it could be. Where will all these fun elements take us: the title, the ever-present technologies, even Eleanor's voice. I would have gone crazier, that's what the story had been telling it would do from the beginning. Too bad it didn't. 

It's still not only an interesting read but one that keeps you there with the story, thinking, wondering. Here's waiting for more from this author.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 4 out of 5.