Divorced Jo, a freelance journalist down on her luck and with little money and prospects lives in a friends posh flat in Camden in the depths of a very snowy wintry time. She has aspirations to write a screenplay. The flat has a home assistant in pretty much every room called Electra which acts oddly. It knows a lot about Jo and a particular event in her life and takes over her life alienating her from her friends and family by disclosing either disturbing facts or outright lies about these friends leaving her questioning her sanity as her father had committed suicide when Jo was a child after a period of mental illness. Jo starts to wonder if she is afflicted by this as the home assistant tries to make her commit suicide.

This novel draws the reader in as it makes you wonder who, if any of Jo's friends are responsible for this or if Jo is mentally disturbed. I could not put it down as I wanted it resolved very well crafted and written novel. Highly recommend.

Thanks to Harper Collins and Netgalley UK for allowing me to read this book ahead of publication in return for a fair and unbiased review

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48002068-s-k-tremayne-the-assistant

Going into this book I had no idea what I signed up for. You see, I recklessly thought that the assistant in this story is a live, breathing person, when instead it was a smart device, similar to Alexa from Amazon.
Even though the story is set in present, at times it felt like the events took place in the future, but I would ascribe that to my “less technology” style of life.

I was so happy when I got an invitation to read this book because I previously read The Fire Child by S. K. Tremayne and really liked it.
I hoped the same will happen with his newest piece of work, and I am happy to say that it did.

The story follows a woman named Jo who lives in her best friend’s house in London almost rent-free. Her friend is very wealthy and she has set of home devices that work as assistant to maintain the house, and keep company to people who live in the house.
As her friend is often out of the house, travelling and sleeping in her boyfrined’s place, Jo is usually alone and after some time the assistent start to talk to her about personal things no one should know.

The book starts slowly and to be honest, the first 10% was pretty boring and dull. Jo was alone and the only character in those chapters and, as I was reading, I started to yearn for other persons, in hope they’ll pick up the story.

As the story progressed it became more and more intriguing. The close to the end I was, the more thrilled I became.

The writing style was amazing and it is easy to read, with many quotes worth remembering.
The story is written in first person, from Jo’s perspective, but it also has several chapters that follow other characters’ perspectives, and those are written in third person.

In the end I loved how the story unfold and it really made me think about the rise of technology in our world and where it all can lead us as species.
What our life will be and will we use it to make our lives easier as we all long for, or will it turn us against each other, bring the worst of us?

The end was satisfying and, even though the first person I suspected turned out to be the villain, I like the reasons and revelations behind the one’s motive.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story and would recommend it to thriller lovers, but also to people who like to read books set in future ( even though this one is set in our time, it felt futuristic in some sense).

The Assistant was a bit of a slow burner, not really getting going until halfway through. That was disappointing considering SK Tremayne’s previous novels. However, this was quite a different novel as it embraced the brave new world of AI. To a significant degree, all the tech that would make this plausible has already arrived. I would direct your attention to OpenAI.com and the GP-2. A large transformer-based language model, this algorithm can generate fake news if allowed or finish Shakespeare’s sonnets. GP-2 is so powerful it won’t be released. Our phones hear and see more than we think and our very positions are known to big data.
There are a few questionable elements in the story. To my knowledge, stuffing clothing down an exhaust pipe stops the engine or blows the exhaust pipe and doesn’t necessarily lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. Firefox is a browser, Google is a search engine. Home ‘assistants’ don’t carry much intelligence, instead they connect you with a massive server which handles your request. Jo could have applied some simple tricks to the assistants to gain some control. Tape over the microphone and apply a thick coating of Vaseline over any camera lens.
The Assistants will probably be looked back on as a novel whose warnings went unheeded, that’s if we survive!

A creepy tale that is full of tense moments and made me think twice about the gadgets in my house! A very enjoyable read with lots of interesting characters.

Chilling story about how new technology can be used to harm people. Are all your devices watching and listening to you? Scary and tense, this is a hold your breath read.

I enjoyed the first two books by this author but not the third so I was looking forward to seeing if this one was on par with The Ice Twins which is my favourite S.K. Tremayne book. It certainly had a very different vibe to it right from the start and if I had been blind reading it, I would never have guessed the author!
The plot is thrilling and very topical with the idea that every home is on the way to having a “home Assistant” like Alexa and reminded me of the computer HAL in the film 2001 A Space Odyssey when things started to go wrong. The main character Jo is worried that it’s her mental health that deteriorating when her home assistant starts to talk to her about things that have occurred previously in her life. But has she inherited her fathers schizophrenia or is something much more dangerous in play? The plot twists the facts like spaghetti on a fork until you have no idea why or if this is actually happening to Jo. The last few chapters were read in a frenzy as everything came together in a spectacular crescendo leaving me breathless! I absolutely loved it from start to finish!

This was different, and all the better for being original.I wasn't sure at first that I liked the main character, she certainly had issues.But I did warm to her as the book progressed.This was certainly a strange tale and I had my ideas about who had done what,but I wasn't right.The book kept me guessing and I enjoyed reading it.Thanks to the publishers and netgalley for an ARC.

I've enjoyed previous works by S K Tremayne but this is the best yet! It's creepy, atmospheric and nerve-wrangling.

The main character is recently-divorced Jo Ferguson, a freelance journalist, renting a room in her posh friend's London flat. The flat is largely controlled by voice-activated technology Electra and the HomeHelps. Electra begins to interact in unexpected ways and seems to know a lot about Jo's past, including something she desperately doesn't want revealed. Needless to say, there are many suspects and all have a motive for putting Jo through hell. Jo's sanity is also highly questionable - is she imagining things? The suspense is expertly maintained right until the end of the book, as suspicion falls on or fades from all of Jo's friends. The constant wintry weather adds to the gloomy, sullen atmosphere and the Sylvia Plath connection is a nice touch.

The presence of AI technology in our homes is becoming more pervasive, along with voice activation and recognition, and learning our behaviours and habits. These, along with the dubious authorship of social media posts, are cleverly and menacingly manipulated to good effect in this superb and highly recommended thriller.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I’ve loved S.K. Tremayne’s previous work so was very excited to get stuck into The Assistant and it didn’t disappoint at all. Very creepy and atmospheric it slowly draws you in and by the mid point I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommended.

Oh, my! This is such a fabulous read. It's dark and sinister and had me guessing and double guessing throughout.

Jo comes from a family with sadness and grief within it and is 'fortunate' enough to be living in her best friend's apartment, this apartment has all the modern conveniences and luxuries, but, is she really lucky to be there?
This novel focuses on our increasing dependence on technology and the advancements of AI and it does so in such a fantastic, riveting way. It also challenges our trust in social media and how much we believe what is written and by whom. There are elements that are shocking and which have stayed with me.

I've enjoyed previous books by this author, but, this is so much better than others I've read. I found the writing style fabulously descriptive and even the characters I didn't like were fully rounded and interesting enough to maintain my focus.

All in all, I couldn't put it down and enjoyed every page.

A fabulous 5* read from me. Thanks so much to Netgalley, Harper Collins UK and the author for the opportunity to review prior to publication in December 2019.

Thank you to Harper Fiction for allowing me to read and review this book!

My thoughts on The Assistant are conflicted. While I enjoyed the premise of the book immensely - Home Assistants who effectively stalk you - the writing presented in the first half of the book was stilted and awkward. It very much felt like a first draft. Dashes and colons were used clumsily, and more often than not they messed with the rhythm of the sentence and the cadence of the paragraphs. I found myself stopping and rereading certain sentences, and sometimes I ignored the grammar altogether, reforming the sentences in my head. The dialogue was far superior to the narration. I've read from S.K. Tremayne before, and I quite like their writing. There certainly were some better pieces of writing, especially in the latter half of the book, that I remember to be more their style, so I do believe the groundwork for a good book is there. I'm confident that some further editing can be used to make this ARC into a more flowing read.

I really enjoyed the plot. With things like Cambridge Analytica and Amazon's malfunctioning Alexa plaguing our modern world, we are all on edge with our technology. The novel felt ominous, a warning, almost foreshadowing the future. We all know our cameras can be hacked, but what about a Home Assistant who's always watching, always listening? We have let these machines into our lives, like Jo, the protagonist has, without heeding much though to the dangers associated with them. We seem to forget they are just as easily hackable as our computers, and yet we are comfortable sharing every part of our house with the robots.

So what does Jo think when the Home Assistants that live in her wealthy best friend's flat start talking to her about her past? Something she has tried to keep hidden for so long? Divorced and homeless if not for her best friend's generosity, she thinks she's going mad, of course. Like her father did before her. With nowhere else to go and no one to believe her, the assistants soon try to take over her life, and the readers are left to watch a breathtaking battle of control.

This book is a very timely and very exhilarating read. However, as someone who has read a fair amount of psychological thrillers, some of the red herrings were quite obviously red herrings, and the pacing needs a little work, too. There were twists, here and there, and the latter half of the novel was leaps and bounds stronger than the first half. That is not to say that the first half of the book wasn't intriguing - it was. It just merely fell a little short of being the new original that wowed me, mostly because I couldn't feel the satisfaction of having solved the mystery when so much was laid so bare in the beginning. I very much thought, 'oh, so this is where the novel is going,' rather than wondering about what'll happen next. The fun in a psychological thriller lies in its ability to force the reader to connect the dots, and when you're told where the dots are and how they're connected, it takes away a lot of the thrill. Again, the latter half excels in twists and the pacing is much improved.

And below, a spoilery portion!

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Another complaint also comes from the first half of the book. The author wants you to believe that Jo, the protagonist, might be suffering from schizophrenia, and therefore hallucinating the Home Assistant Electra talking to her. She knows things about Jo, things only very few people could know, things only she herself could know. We find out very early on in the book that her father had suffered from schizophrenia. And he had always thought the TV was talking to him, too. The author wants the reader to draw parallels and come to the conclusion that Jo might be suffering from the same fate as her dad. But it is, again, done in a rather clumsy way. It's a conversation with her mother, where her mother asks her if she didn't have children lest they inherit their grandfather's mental illness, that informs the reader of the connection. It lacked the grace and subtlety psychological thrillers usually have. The 'thrill' was missing. I immediately knew the 'is she mad, is she not mad' was going to be the focus of the book, and it didn't creep up on me slowly and menacingly, it didn't keep me guessing. It just happened and it took a lot of the punch away from the book's potential to thrill me. If Jo had, for instance, talked to her mother, mentioned feeling guilty about not calling her enough in her lonely widowhood, and then had Tabitha later mentioned her father when she berated Jo for her paranoia regarding the technology, it would have had more of a 'a ha!' effect for the reader.

Not to mention how quickly the author resolves the conflict between her mother and Jo, how fast she believes her daughter is fine. There is hardly any interaction between the two, and when her mother passes away due to Electra's actions, it lacks the impact it could have had. Her mother could have unexpectedly dropped in on her, when Electra was talking to her, and Jo could have desperately tried to make her believe that she was being haunted by the machines. The schizophrenia talk could have better been expanded then, and with prior mention of her father's death and paranoia, it would have been more satisfactory for the reader to see the connection come to light. A 'so THAT's why she's worrying about going mad, THAT's why Tabitha's sceptical!' Her mother's nonchalance is otherwise unbelievable, and their bond didn't just seem distant, it seemed non-existent.

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The plot was otherwise compelling, and I found The Assistant to be a very fast read. The issues above are resolvable, and even if they're left as they are, I firmly believe many people will enjoy the novel.

I am huge fan of the author’s previous work but this one is just outstanding! Creepy and menacing, it gets right under the skin when you least expect it! I devoured it in a day, it’s that good!!

Menacing ! That’s the word I kept thinking of ,it drips with it ,every page it gets more and more scary .im not easily creeped ,I expected some usual stalky type stuff through the mod cons in the house but I didn’t expect it to be so gooood
Even though I have enjoyed every one of this authors novels this was the most creepy.
I didn’t even find my self skimming at all ,I did finally guess and the motive but it did make me scratch my head before hand
Ty for another good read !
Four stars due to the growing menace the fear u feel for her and the well imagined atmosphere
I felt like I was in that appartner the walls closing in the trapped feeling as I’m suffocated by the electronic devices in my house
Is she becoming unwell,is it someone else and just as u think u have an answer something or one is ruled out
Fun exiting creepy read
Thanks netgalley and publishers for advanced copy

This book starts slowly and I dipped in and out with a chapter here and there. Then slowly, imperceptibly, I was hooked.

Jo is a journalist, living with a friend after the breakdown of her marriage and haunted by something that happened in her youth.

The hi-tech apartment she shares with her friend is hooked up to the latest inventions and everything is controlled by Electra and Home Assist. Then, these systems begin to glitch. I hate spoilers in reviews, so I’ll leave my synopsis there!

I literally felt my heart racing as I read this book. There were many plot twists and you never quite knew where you were going next- this author is skilled at misdirection and planting seeds in your mind. Once I was hooked, I raced towards the finish, desperate to find out what how or even if Jo could extract herself from the situation she found herself in.

Well- written and pacy, this book will keep you reading long into the night... and will make you want to turn your own ‘Assistants’ off! Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for my copy of this book.