Reviewed by Kim Anisi for Readers' Favorite

Rebecca, the protagonist of Uncanny Valley by C.A. Gray, suddenly finds herself in a spot. She is working on an experiment to pinpoint exactly how creativity works and which parts of the brain are connected to it, when a speech by the president changes everything. Her boss, Liam, who is against bots and their growing influence in the life of humans, is alarmed and suddenly his locus (sort of a blog / forum type in this futuristic world) and those of his friends are all taken off the labyrinth. Soon Rebecca finds out that the death of her father might not really have been the result of a sudden disease ... and some other people died at the same time, for the same reason. It seems like there is a secret that people had to die for. And now bots are supposed to become creative, which could lead to a super-intelligence that could eventually take over the world. Together with Liam, Rebecca travels to the big city to meet others who want to stop the development that could mean the end of humanity. But will they find an answer in time? Or are they already too late?

It took me a few pages to truly get into Uncanny Valley, but then it was hard to stop. I could relate to Rebecca, even though we don't have that much in common interest-wise (apart from the writing). She goes on a journey to find answers to questions about her father and the true reason for his death. Along the way, she and readers get to meet some interesting characters. Some you'll love, some you'll find funny, some you'd rather not ever meet in your own life. I found the author created a really good mix of secondary characters. I started to feel quite comfortable in the pages of the story even though the possible outcomes were anything but comfortable, of course. The end of the book is a cliffhanger and that's where the author leaves us! The next part is going to be quite interesting as there'll be even more questions.

I enjoyed the plot because since Star Trek (The Next Generation) I often wondered about things like androids and robots. Could they be like humans? Have a soul and feel things? Would they eradicate humankind to improve the world? How would a super-intelligence evolve and deal with the problems around it? This novel also asks some of these questions and gives some interesting explanations about free will and emotions. It's definitely worth a read if these kinds of topics interest you. It's a well written book, with a little bit of romance, and some comedy. I found it all to be very well balanced.