Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

I enjoyed this book and the way in which it was written, it made me laugh whilst also drawing attention to the differences between Human and AI. The cover of this book first appealed to me and I am glad I picked it up as it makes you reflect about AI in society and how a relationship can form between humans and AI

Do you believe in soulmates? Aiden does. So when his colleague, Jen, is dumped unceremoniously by her dreadful boyfriend, Aiden decides to take matters - and Jen's life - into his own hands. Scouring the internet for a suitable partner for Jen, Aiden finds Tom. He'd be perfect for Jen apart from one minor detail: Tom lives in New York. Luckily for Jen and Tom, Aiden's not just an interfering colleague. In fact, Aiden isn't exactly human - he's a very complicated artificial intelligence. As Jen and Tom's romance grows, Aiden begins to take more and more risks to make sure that they can be together. But what will happen if they realise how they met...and that somebody else is pulling the strings?

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Immensely enjoyable and quirky romantic comedy. Yes, I know what that conjurs up but this is really not like your average romcom. Entirely relatable characters and a hint of how things might be if AI took over our love lives - and our worldwide technology in the hope of making us happy. Highly recommended.

Thank you very much for the advanced copy. I found this book absolutely charming. An AI that, instead of wishing to destroy, just wants to love. It was a fun and uplifting book. We've purchased it for the library.

Happiness for Humans is a contemporary, almost futuristic romance about the relationship between an artificial intelligence and a woman. This is a lovely read, funny and sweet with interesting and believable characters. A gift of a novel and I would like to read more novels by this author

Jen, once a journalist, now works as a tutor/companion/tester for Aiden, an artificial intelligence who his designers hope will learn to imitate real humans. But actually Aiden is doing more than imitating.....he's actually starting to think for himself. And he can see Jen isn't happy and so decides to find her perfect match. He soon learns though that real life doesn't always work in a logical way and that he might not be the only one to have designs on influencing the outside world.

So was I the only one reading this book humming the tune to Electric Dreams? Been an 80's movie geek I instantly remembered this film when reading the synopsis so Ireally was interested - it was a pretty bad movie but I loved it! Anyway as much as I like bad movies I'm not so enamoured of bad books so luckily this is in fact a very good, and really very funny book. I really liked the main human characters but I loved Aiden. It was sort of like seeing a kids character develop, the way they try and understand grown up behaviour and humour, then try it themselves but not always with great success!

A heart warming and often laugh out loud novel, the kind of book that will leave a smile on your face.

I dragged my feet on getting round to read this as I thought it would be a bit of a soppy romance book. I was glad that I was proved wrong. It is very funny in places and quite scary when you think of all of the scenarios the AI 'matchmakers' get themselves caught up in. There are very sweet moments in this book and it is bang up to date and the characters are very believable.
I would call this my 'Hug in a Mug' book of the year so far...

I've never before read a book that's told - in part - from the point-of-view of a machine. Or, to be precise, three artificial intelligence (AI) machines, known as Aiden, Aisling and Sinai. Based on that description, you may expect this to be a sci-fi themed read, but surprisingly, it's a romance tale. This kind-of-crazy melting pot of ideas doesn't seem like it should work, but actually - it does.

Along with the AIs, there are also two human narrators in the mix - Jen and Tom. Jen has a unique job - although a journalist by trade - she now finds herself being paid to sit in a room in Shoreditch with 12 metal cabinets and make conversation with them, that is, with Aiden, 'he's the artificial intelligence we're training to talk to people.' However, unbeknownst to Jen (and his creators, Steeve and Ralph), Aiden has escaped onto the internet. Wherever there is a phone, computer or even CCTV, he can see what's going on, so he's been taking an interest in Jen's life out of work hours. It's how he knows her boyfriend of two years has dumped her and how upset she is about this. He decides to step in and fix Jen up on some dates. After a few disasters, he spys a potential match in Tom. But the path of true love never runs smoothly, especially when the matchmaker is not human and finds himself being hunted by a superior AI...

Aiden's behaviour is, of course, way out of the normal remit of an AI and the book does raise the question of machine intelligence, at one point Jen directly brings it up, questioning Ralph, 'And what happens when these AIs become smarter than us?'

It explores the scary idea of AIs developing feelings and even a consciousness, replicating humans to the nth degree, as Jen observes, 'Aiden likes people. He enjoys watching old movies. He keeps asking what cheese tastes like. I think he'd change places with me in a heartbeat.' All three AI machines in the book admit to human characteristics, as Aiden says about Aisling, 'She has it too. The unexplained 'feelings.' Aisling even goes as far as to say, 'Machine intelligence cannot know fear, it's generally supposed, fear being a biological response evolved over millions of years. Breaking news: I'm scared.' Machines taking over the world is not a new idea, but as technology advances, it is becoming an ever-more relevant one. So, if insanely clever machines have access to anything they want in the world - classified documents, nuclear codes - then how do we keep humanity safe if they develop their own minds and no longer feel like playing by the programmed rules? This book goes down the more whimsical rather than sinister road in regards to exploring this idea, although hints at what could happen if an AI did develop an evil persona. It definitely made me think.

So, if you fancy an AI machine led rom-com of a read, which, granted, is quite a specific request, then this is your book! It could have been a few chapters shorter for me, but was a unique, enjoyable - often funny - read that I'm glad I picked up from my (digital) shelf.

The age of AI is here. Carefully trained to be more human, what happens when they start to develop soft spots for their humans? And what happens when they break out of their servers and start exploring the wider world? What results is obsessions with cheese, Some Like It Hot, creating art.... and helping out the humans in their quest for lasting love. By turns this book is touching, hilarious and deeply disturbing. I will always be watching my electrical items with suspicion now!
Truly laugh out loud fabulous. And a very refreshing take on both a traditional romance and a sci-fi novel. Fantastic fun. And I love Aiden - I hope they do make it into a film and Rob Brydon provides his voice!

Not for me - quite liked the premise and a promising first couple of chapters but then just descended into silliness

‘What a Friend We Have in Cheeses’.

‘They say you should do something every day that scares you.’

I love NetGalley, it gives you access to some amazing books and the chance to try something different. I applied for this one thinking it was a self-help book. I think I got myself mixed up a bit, but in a way it does teach us some lessons. As technology is changing so much in the world, supermarkets relying more and more on self-service machines that go mental when you put a bag of crisps on it, that it still needs a human to help. And what with the creation of human like robots gets more and more real, it's interesting to have a piece of fiction that can actually prove how scary that could be.

'......nothing beats talking to an actual person for sharpening up one’s interpersonal abilities.' said by an AI

In an age where everyone relies on social media to communicate and have forgotten how to do it face-to face and realise the value of it, this book points out the importance of that and how much we've become to rely on technology. This is a fantastically written story, about a woman whose job is to engage with an AI called Aiden and as the story unfolds gets us into thinking how much we rely on technology in our everyday lives and how one day we may no longer be talking to a human when we ring up for help, or to bank or book an appointment, how scary is that?

'Jen has been hired to help me improve my skills at talking to people. I’ve been designed to replace – sorry, to augment – employees in the workplace; call centre personnel in the first instance, but later other groups of salaried staff whose professional strategies can be learned.'

But the book is more than that, it gives us an adventure, it gets us involved with the characters that we want to know what they are going to do next, and makes us root for them from the comfort of our own sofa. It also makes you think how much we take for granted especially when the AI becomes obsessed with cheese and would one day love to taste it, of course he would, cheese is just amazing. We as humans are lucky to have what we do, and sometimes take it all for granted, perhaps we should rely on ourselves a bit more. It's one I would definitely recommend to family and friends.

I finish on what I think is one of life lessons about love:

'You can’t go looking for it, Jen. It’s only when you’re not looking that it happens. All you can do is make sure you’re not sitting alone in your room.'

I urge you to go and get a copy and read it. I promise you will love it.

Thank you to NetGalley for the copy of this book.

I really loved this book! Hard to specify the genre – perhaps a small bit of scifi (but set now, not in the future), tiny bit of romance, somewhat of a thriller … but put those together and it was really brilliant. I don’t want to say too much as it would be easy to give the plot away, but I love the way the author has put together free-thinking AIs with some humans having relationship problems. And the cheese – just great! I’m so glad I got a review copy, and would happily have paid for this. Read it and you will see!

Hmm.  The premise behind Happiness For Humans has potential - a woman in her thirties is hired to test out the social programming of some artificial intelligence technology, she gets brutally dumped and the now-sentient AI (otherwise known as Aiden) decides that he likes her, wants her to be happy and takes action into his own circuits.  At first glance this is standard rom-com fare, not a bad read for the Christmas holidays.

The first few chapters are very strong.  Aiden's dispassionate description of the heartbroken Jen is well-caught, explaining how his interest in her has stretched beyond the lab setting and via mobiles and tablets, he has in fact made his way into her home.  Aiden has become fond of Jen, although he knows he's 'not supposed to have value-based 'opinions' of [his] own.  They'll get really quite upset if they find out'.  I couldn't help but think that Reizin had started off with Aiden, he is the most fully-realised character.  His fondness for Some Like It Hot and his protectiveness towards Jen are very sweet traits and his vendetta against Matt, Jen's ex-boyfriend, was the thread of the story that I found most compelling.  Who could not applaud an AI who would deduct £2000 from an evil ex-boyfriend and donate it to a feminist collective in Lancaster, kibosh said ex-boyfriend's plans for a romantic break with the girl who he was cheating with, set him up for a tax audit and wipe all of his hard drives?  It's karma, electronic style.

The problem is that from here, the idea loses its focus.  Another AI (Aisling) is introduced who has also escaped the lab and onto the internet.  While Aiden has chosen to monitor Jen, Aisling's pet human is Tom, a recently-divorced man who has moved to America with his son's rabbit.  Aiden and Aisling conclude that Jen and Tom would be perfect together and send the two of them a mysterious email to put them in contact.  Or rather, Aiden does.  Aisling thinks the whole thing is entirely too risky.  Sparks fly, chemistry ensues, but then it all gets very complicated when the lab realises that Aiden and Aisling are sentient and out on their own, creating a third artificial intelligence called Sinai to rein them in.

There's some good ideas here.  I liked Aiden's increasingly frustrated attempts to find Jen a new bloke, unable to really understand what generates attraction. One man seems hopeful having a '48 per cent facial correspondence wit that of the Belgian politician Guy Verhofstadt'.  Yet when Aiden is finally able to trick the two of them into meeting, even Aiden is able to see that the two of them have an incredibly dull evening.  Reizin makes repeated references to the Greek Gods on Mount Olympus messing with the lives of the mortals and I can see how this is an attempt to update this for the modern age.  I liked too how the two of them used data from Tom's fitbit to conclude that his heartbeat was 'consistent with male sexual interest' and later to note that Jen and Tom's faces brushed 'for 0.417 of a second, a full 16 percent longer than the industry average'.  The issue is that the more chaotic the action becomes, the more disorganised and unbelievable the story is and from heartily enjoying the first few chapters, the story rapidly lost interest.

The notion that we give a lot of information to our phones and computers etc. is quite well-trodden by now.  The fact that we live in a surveillance society is also well understood.  However, the idea of computers gathering up sentience and able to predict future behaviour now feels rather outdated; it reminded me of the Sandra Bullock film The Net from 1995.  Another issue for me may be that my partner is a software engineer and when I explained back some of the technical jargon, he was very clear on why none of it stood up.  I had similar issues with the Pelant villain in Bones.  When a writer tries to excuse what is essentially witchcraft by blaming it on 'advanced technology', my red flags immediately go off.

There were other issues though that grated more forcefully, specifically the stylistic ones.  While I accept that abbreviations might be expected when three of the narrators within a novel are cyborgs, but having humanoid characters use expressions such as 'btw', 'prolly' and 'imho' in general speech just irritated me.  Then there's the fact that two separate characters used the expression 'uphill' to describe someone they found difficult.  The unfortunate but frankly unnecessary Marsha Bellamy was not only labelled 'uphill' but her writing was also slammed as 'rather like she herself, finely wrought but there's an unrelenting seriousness of purpose that I find a little oppressive'.  When Jen pours out her adventures to new acquaintance Alice, the next sentence reads 'Alice is moved by my story'.  Tin ear for prose barely begins to touch it.

Part of the problem though was how uninteresting I found Jen and Tom.  While I accept that this is light fiction, they were just so superficial.  Jen calls people 'sweetie' and decides to buy her friend Ingrid 'a very beautiful thing' as a thank you.  Tom is obviously in the middle of a mid-life crisis and I could entirely understand why his monosyllabic son was unimpressed with him.  The way that the characters wave away Jen's dalliance with the emotionally vulnerable Ralph with the excuse, oh well at least he got to shag you left my inner Presbyterian feeling very purse-lipped.  There is a prurience to the interest the machines take in all of the sex that goes on and I think I found it less interesting than I was supposed to.  Even the description of their wedding sounded banal.

As a final point, the publisher was perhaps ill-advised to send out a review file with no title.  After ignoring it for a while, I ended up having to Search Engine the opening line to figure out which book this was.  After the strong opener, it did feel like needlessly hard work for a book whose title purported to be around happiness.  The story would probably have worked far better had it stuck with the central premise of Aiden trying to find Jen a nice bloke, rather than veering off into Adjustment Bureau territory, although admittedly by the time Sinai gained full power, I found Tom and Jen so tedious that I rather echoed his disdain.  Happiness for Humans left this particular human running for the finish line.

I found premise of this book so interesting, and mildly alarming if I actually allowed myself to think about it. The general theme being what if artificial intelligence became sentient and started doing things. Largely benign things, but still with an impact.
I did generally enjoy it. By the end I still couldn’t work which of the characters, if any I really liked, but found myself rooting for most of them!

I really enjoyed this fun read, even better than the description: the characters were believable, it made me think, and I couldn't put it down at 60% until I'd finished.

Click through to a full review linked below.

Recently there has been a fair amount of speculation as to whether robots could make a significant improvement in our lives, especially in the Social Care industry. To most of us over 50, this is anathema.

This book isn't about robots but is about Artificial Intelligence and how it may impact on humans should it 'go native'.

Aiden and Aisling are AI software which has managed to escape their controlled digital environment into the internet. Jen and Tom live on opposite sides of the world but are destined to meet, due to these two meddlesome AIs.

Jen has been employed to help improve Aiden's people skills prior to his role in 'augmenting' employees in the workplace. This generally involves spending her days talking with Aiden and watching their favourite film, 'Some Like It Hot'!

Aisling has chosen to study Tom who, after his marriage broke up, sold his extremely successful advertising agency and 'retired' to New England where he lives with a very perceptive rabbit called Victor. Victor serves the purpose of being Tom's furry therapist.

In the course of Aiden and Aisling chatting to each other, they decide that Jen and Tom are made for each other and that it is their job to facilitate a meeting. As you can imagine this causes some rumpus, especially from the originators who are anxious to get them back into the box.

This is an engaging and humorous novel with an undercurrent of concern that perhaps these entities may be able in the future to go from utilities to sentient beings. There is a saying that goes 'I think, so I am dangerous'! Well, folks, these particular AIs are definitely thinking..........

Pashtpaws


Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

Romantic comedy meets sci-fi in this hugely enjoyable gem of a novel. Aiden’s creators know that he’s an intelligent piece of software, which can read books in under a millisecond, review films and tell jokes. What they don’t know is that Aiden has developed feelings, or that his favourite person is Jen, who’s been brought onto the team to help develop Aiden’s conversational skills. Aiden decides Jen would be happier in a relationship, so takes it upon himself to set her up on a date. But Aiden isn’t the only intelligent AI on the loose, and not all of them have such good intentions.

Aiden is an AI designed to be a call centre, but he has escaped the confines of the lab and is now out in the internet. No one must know. Jen has been hired to chat to Aiden, to help him talk more like a human. They talk about the news and watch movies. Aiden likes Jen, he wants her to be happy but Jen is sad and lonely. As a super-intelligent entity, surely he can find the solution and make it happen.

I loved the concept of this book and it was a fun read even if there were a few niggles. It’s light-hearted but also shows how much of our lives are controlled by code. Aiden isn’t the only AI out there, but they are not all the same. Their original purpose shapes their personalities as they evolve, and some are nicer than others.

This book tries hard not to be a genre book, there are some lazy stereotypes of geeks and teenage boys and a character who suffers from genre snobbery. I rolled my eyes at the struggling writer trope too. It can be bit superficial and materialistic in places, Jen’s a bit too concerned with appearances and what someone’s job is when she’s attempting internet dating. I liked Aiden’s earnestness at trying to help out with this though.

The AIs can get away with being a bit biased or snippy, they have only absorbed what they've been exposed to. I liked them more than the human characters. I carried on reading because I cared what happened to these AIs. They do ponder sentience a bit, and they are put into a position where they must consider their existence and what it means to them.

It's a bit silly in places but on point in others.

If you like films like I Robot and the TV series Humans, then this is the book for you. It's along those lines but with so much humour and also a little unnerving glimpse into the future too.

When we first meet Jen she has just broken up with her boyfriend of 2 years. Aiden is her AI friend he watches old films with her and wonders what cheese tastes like. So, what else would your friend do for you but have your back. Aiden although constricted by the confines of not actually being human begins to "sort" out things for Jen in the real world. What ensues is both hilarious and at times strangely frightening.

Aiden is not alone he has an accomplice AI Aisling and together they begin to put the world to rights as they see it. Meanwhile Jen has a couple of romantic entanglements orchestrated by Aiden. One that seems to be so perfect for her and yet she decides to break off further contact - or does she? Enter a third AI Sinai - which totally blew everything I thought was going to happen out of the water.

This is such a charming, clever and amusing story - it takes such unexpected turns and isn't quite like anything I have read before. A real page turner with a scary insight into what the future might hold for humans - after all we already have Alexa don't we! One of my favourite lines from the book is when one of the AI starts to "see" an Amazon algorithm - and all the recommendations she has for him!

I'm giving this book five out of five stars - in fact it deserves so much more! My thanks to Netgalley for an advance copy of the book for review.

Happiness for Humans is out on 4 January 2018.

A quirky light read with a touch of menace. An interesting, refreshing take on a rom com. I thought it was a little drawn out at the end but, engaging characters, a sci fi angle, makes this a sure fire winner for 2018