Based solely on the authors and not knowing anything about the book, my book club selected I Think I Was Murdered by Colleen Coble and Rick Acker. I soon learned that the odd title was indeed spot on for this romantic suspense featuring bitcoin and AI. I am decidedly uninformed about both subjects, but the authors presented a plot that explains in chilling detail what each can involve. Main character Katrina lost her husband in a car accident a year before the book takes place. She has been talking to him through an AI app developed by the company she works for. Through it she discovers his death may have not been an accident, but murder. The book’s intriguing premise kept me thinking, while the fast-paced plot kept the pages turning. The fictional small town Northern California setting took me to a new fun place filled with Norwegian-inspired details. I started reading this book a few days after a trip to Norway, so that was an added bonus. There are plenty of surprising twists and turns that kept this novel from being predictable. The growing romance between Katrina and a high school friend was sweet. I Think I Was Murdered was a quick read that is perfect for a weekend reading escape.
Recommended.
Audience: Adults.
( I purchased the ebook from Amazon. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)
Just a year ago, Katrina Berg was at the pinnacle of her career. She was a rising star in the AI chatbot start-up everyone was talking about, married with an adoring husband, and had more money than she knew how to spend. Then her world combusted. Her husband, Jason, was killed in a fiery car crash. Her CEO was indicted, and, as the company’s legal counsel, Katrina faces tough questions as the Feds take over and lock her out of her office. The final blow is the passing of her beloved grandmother.
Her most prized possession is the beta prototype for a new, ultra-sophisticated chatbot loaded onto her phone. The contents of Jason’s email, social media backups, pictures, and every bit of data she could find were loaded into the bot, and Katrina has “talked” to him every day for the past six months. She has been amazed at how well it works. Even the syntax and words the bot uses sound like Jason. Sometimes, she imagines he isn’t really dead and is right there beside her. She knows it’s slowing her grief recovery, but she can’t stop pretending.
On a particularly bad day, she taps out: Tell me something I don’t know. The cursor blinks for several moments and seems frozen before the reply flashes quickly onto the screen: I think I was murdered.
Distraught, Katrina returns to her cozy Norwegian-flavored hometown in the Northern California redwoods and enlists the help of Seb Wallace, local restaurateur and longtime acquaintance, to try to parse out the truth of what really happened. They must navigate the complicated paths of grief, family dynamics, and second chances, as well as the complex questions of how much control technology has. And staying alive long enough to do that is far more difficult than either of them dreamed.
Bestselling authors Coble and Acker deftly combine a high-concept plot with gripping intrigue and closed-door romance in I Think I Was Murdered. Don’t miss it!
Fascinating.