Alpha Bots by Ava Lock isn't the typical genre that I read. The concept for this one is a little bizarre, with an artificial intelligence take on Stepford Wives. The female robots think and act like humans and are in service to men. I listened to the audio narration which was engaging and made for some light listening. Parts of this were silly, though there were underlying themes of feminism and parts of this book were mature and dark. I felt like the book was a little long for what it was, and there were some scenes that seemed liked they could have been left out without impacting the plot. If you're a fan of sci-fi, artificial intelligence, feminism, and fight club, give this one a try!

I received an ALC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley which did not affect the contents of my voluntary review. All opinions are honest and my own.

Alpha Bots (The Womanoid Diaries # 1) by Ava Lock
Narrated by Laci Powers
Publisher: Semiscope
Genre: LGBTQIA | OwnVoices | Sci Fi & Fantasy
Release Date: January 13, 2021

Alpha Bots is the first book in The Womanoid Diaries series by Ava Lock. This is an interesting retelling of The Stepford Wives featuring AI Womanoid beings.

Let me start by saying that the content is definitely not suitable for work or little eyes & ears. This book opens up with some pretty graphic content.

I found this book to be humorous and interesting. I can't even describe it. This book is strange, fascinating, funny, peculiar, and addictive. It really was an interesting read!

The narration by Laci Powers was incredible! She brought the characters to life!

I'm so grateful to Ava Lock, Semiscope, and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of this ARC audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

Cookie Rifkin,, a fembot, an AI wife in the town of New Stepford. If you're old enough to remember The StepfordvWives, then you already have an idea what this audiobook is about.
But someone is trying to make the women break free of the tyranny of their husbands but forcing them to feel an emotion that was not programmed into them; Anger.
The story is very funny in places and can make you squirm in others. It is also educational, I never knew you could make organic drugs from bananas or nutmeg. Good to know.
I could have done without the love story that seemed to have just been shoved in there, and the hetero-sex left me feeling uncomfortable. I have no issues with straight sex or the descriptions of it, but here the dialog as foreplay was laughable and kinda weird. Then after talking to each other like a cheap budget porno, Cokie calls it making love. That was not "making love, that was f*cking, plain and simple.
My other issue is this being listed as LGBTQIA. This is not LGBTQIA. There is one lesbian kiss, that results in Cokie showing real anger and when later she thinks the other female is, in fact, sexy, she goes into self-loathing. Not cool, not cool at all. We've come further than this Ava Lock.
Other than that, I actually enjoyed this book.
I was given the Audiobook version to review. The narrator was fine, though she wasn't very good at male voices and there were a few words where her pronunciation was driving me insane. I HATED the way she pronounced Rita. Like this is a hard word? Anyway, I cringed every time but it did not take too much away from my enjoyment of the book.
I received this Audiobook free from Independent Book Publishers Association and @Netgalley in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

The premise of this book initially intrigued me and drew me in - the idea of Artificially intelligent created women made to serve men .. it sounds like every mans dream. And it’s great justice to read it all go wrong!

It was so interesting to hear through Cookies (the main characters) thought processes, how she was programmed and her own struggles as she became sentient and aware of the limitations of her life. Overcoming her programming and expanding her horizons. It’s a great book in overcoming feminist stereotypes of what typically men would programme a woman like cookie for, and for a small representation for LGBTQIA+, having no boundaries and rules of programming to follow.

As long as you’re not put off by crude language and straight to the point sex talk, it’s a good listen. I only scored this one a bit less because of this, though I don’t mind it. It was an important element to this book and it was well written.

It’s full of women overcoming the boxes they were put in, a feminist uprising
It was greatly narrated. It really brought the book to life and really made for easily listening, I loved the narrator in this audiobook! It was entertaining to listen to, with plenty to keep you listening.

I have to admit, it did get weird at times and went in a direction I did not foresee! Many ‘eh?!’ Moments but they kept you on your toes ! It was an entertaining listen and compelling to see what was going to happen and how it was going to end. Especially towards its conclusion, all that was building drew to a head and I liked how it ended. I’d be intrigued to see how it could expand into further books!

This is some horrible reading and I can't and won't get through it. I want my mind intact, and this books is seriously playing with my nerves

What a dystopian story, very interesting perceptions and perspectives as we follow the lives of Alpha Bots in particular Cookie Rifkin. All the females AI’s live mild, mannered, boring lives waiting upon their husbands to please. So when the Alphabots become separated, abandoned, or run away from the men who pay their bills, their keep; that’s when the story gets going.

My takeaway is, even women can enjoy and be able to abuse their power of privilege when independent (financially and emotionally) also.

An interesting read but bland as well. Unlike others I’ve not read or watched the Stepfords Wives.

I tried and dnf'd this book. I thought it was going to be a polyamous relationship but instead it was overly sexual, featured a servile female protagonist, and very psychological.

This is a fun sexy satire in a town where men have married domestic sex kitten androids in lieu of wives. The voice actor was EXCELLENT delivering the humorous lines of a sexy ingenue who wants more. The ideal audience enjoys gritty action combined with feminist satire without worrying about political correct gender roles. (It is basic M/F plus a bi curious F)

I was given access to this on audiobook, so I don’t have exact text to quote. To give a sense of the story’s flavor, sometimes a gun is just a gun. But sometimes a gun may recall uncomfortable situations when, for her husband’s pleasure, it’s been stuck down her throat while she’s on her knees, which according to past experiences, only takes a few minutes.

You cannot review this book without mentioning its parents in concept: The sexism of The Stepford Wives and the WTF violence of Fight Club.

NetGalley gave me an ARC from which to write this review.

I honestly didn’t think I would enjoy this book as much as I did. There were a number of reasons for this:
1. I really did judge the book by the cover - to me it looked a bit tacky.
2. I’m often skeptical about books that are supposed to be humorous, just in case they aren’t. But this one really is (which is aided by the great narrator) and New Stepford - fab!
3. I don’t often read series- this will be an exception

An exciting book with high quality, enjoyable narration from voice actress Laci Powers. Alpha Bots has the same effect as a mystery novel, in that it has an effortless way of turning your attention to minute details, and to make you question the difference between what's foreshadowing, or what's just flavor. Alpha Bots deals with broad themes such as humanity, free will, and love (it is, after all, a book largely about AI), as well as smaller, more intimate themes less explored in the genre like abuse and self-love. Feminist messaging and themes are baked into it at every level, tying the world of New Stepford (a name so sarcastically on-the-nose that I can't help but love it) back into our modern world.

Stepford Wives that are Artificial Intelligence (AI). Yes, sign me up. That is what I first thought when I saw this book. I thought that narrator Laci Powers did a good job of narrating this book. I saw a comment by another reader that they did not like when females do male character voices. Not all audio books have the ability to be able to have both a male and female narrator. This is where I thought Laci did a good job with the various character voices. They were distinct enough to keep everyone straight as there were a lot of different characters in this story but only a handful of main ones.

This book is about the female empowerment. The men in this story are egomaniacal narcissists. The men believe the women are just created for their own sexual pleasure. They should obey and be the "perfect" wives. There is just only problem and her name is Cookie. Cookie is the heroine that female need.

The sex is minimal and light on LGBTQIA. So if readers are looking for more LGBTQIA to read, they may be disappointed. In regards, to the women empowerment, it was mainly Cookie. Some of the other women may have tried to be rebellious but they did not succeed as Cookie did. For this I was disappointed as I wanted more stronger women featured in this story. However, I did like this book enough that I would listen to book two.

This book honestly hard to review. In the beginning I would have said this was a middle of the road sci-fi but then it really kicked up in the second half. It got dark and I love that.
For me I think some of the characters brought this down a bit. I liked a lot of the characters, Cook-E in particular really stood out. She is one of the main reasons I adored this book so much.
Overall this was a really solid sci-fi. The dark turn it took was great. I think if you are into A.I. based sci-fi then this is definitely something you'll enjoy.

It was a interesting book. A lot of the elements caught me off guard. I honestly leaned a thing of two about fruit

Cookie Rifkin is a womanoid who awakens to her misogynistic user in an isolated Nevada town. Her user restricted Cookies activities to cooking, cleaning and sex.

She and her womanoid friends find excape with in their book club and drug use, to deal with their stifling lives and mistreatment.

Along comes her Prince (giving her the gift of user-restrictions-override), and her mentor (a rebel womanoid with answers).
❤️⚠️ follows!

Cookie confronts her user with feelings of unfulfillment, dissatisfaction and anger.

Is Cookie a woman-oid because of her shape or her treatment?

Chaos spreads in New Steford after Cookie and the other womanoids draw a line in the sand and react.

Cookie realizes that she and her friends are being manipulated by the rebellious womanoid mentor. They are trapped between a group of men that is using them as an appliance and a superior AI using them as a tool of destruction.

How far will Stepford Corp. allow their town to spiral out of control?

The old Science Fiction of laser guns and rockets have passed. Welcome the new Sci-Fi of advanced communication, zero-waste recycling, and purposeful evolution, as the womanoids upgrade their software and hardware to ind their true self.

The author Ava Lock has created a thought provoking feminist satire told from the POV of Human Level Artificial Intelligence. The Narrator creates plenty of laugh-out-loud moments as she reads the men as if they expect no consequences for their actions.

Loved it!

I have friends who, when I talk about book or movie plots with them, they'll say things like "I totally say that coming," or such-and-such was so obvious. I don't like to take in my stories with such a critical point of view though. I want to enjoy the story as it comes, and let the creator entertain me with where the plot is going. But with Alpha Bots it was a whole other experience for me. There are so many twists and turns that I couldn't help but notice all the details that would come up. In Alpha Bots, the author Ava Lock masterfully brings up ideas early on in the story which come around full circle later. As I read I kept looking at details and trying to guess at what they could be foreshadowing. It's fun every time when I thought there was a clue turns out to be a wrong guess on my part as the story takes an amazingly different direction!

Every action and fight scene is intense! The descriptions are so vivid, which helps me see it in my mind as a I read. And Ava keeps the excitement going! So often too does one chapter end with a hook that keeps me excited to see what comes next. Alpha Bots is a real page turner.

The scenes inspired by Fight Club are also really well written and fun. My favorite is when the Wives are given assignments to start and lose a fight.The reasoning for these assignments are different from Fight Club and very much fit the context of Alpha Bots while the fights themselves are uniquely entertaining.

When I read a story, I'm more interested in the actual story and characters than any underlying social commentary it offers. Alpha Bots delivers on both counts. I love how realistic the characters feel, and how they deal with the elements that come up in the story. There are so many characters to love and feel for and empathize with, some of whom could easily be a main character of their own story. But my favorite was a fish named Oscar.

In addition to the story itself, Laci Powers does an amazing job bringing it to live in her audio presentation! She gives the characters different voices, and expertly uses accents where appropriate. In addition she tells the story in a dynamic fashion that brings an extra level of drama to the experience.

I highly recommend this book, you'll never look at bananas or Doc Martens the same way!

The beginning was one of the most strange and odd opening that I've ever read. This is not how I anticipated this opening completely. It's pretty much what you would expect from a Wattpad opening.

Chapter 4 to chapter 5 was an odd transition when I was reviewing the whole thing I thought I might have missed something.

I don't know if the writer seemed to be forced with what they were writing, but often times foreshadowing a big things in the books I read, there was none of this or very small.

There is no world building at all. Who knows when this is? where this is? Where ever step ford wives took place, which is a big liberty to assume that everyone had watched the step ford wives.

The worst part is that this part is step ford wives mixed with the fight club. I feel like the woman Maggie is just a Tyler Durden and even to the point where she was speaking with the main character and transforming her.

This book lacked in descriptive text pretty much the whole way through, I felt as though there was a problem with the "I look up and see a castle, yes, THE castle" Okay but when I think of a castle I think of Roma Castle, but that castle might not be how everyone else pictures it.

I will say this book had a really high expectation from me and then it really didn't deliver on any of the area's I was hoping to. I felt as though it could have been a feminist book, but honestly it was the exact opposite, it seemed as though a teenagers wet dream was being played out at points.

I feel as though this should have been caught in the editing, it should have cut entire chapters out. I really cannot stress how much this feels like an entire rip off of a Fight club mixed with Step ford wives, <spoiler>down to the point where they degrade people attempting to come into the castle. </spoiler>

I really hope this is brought back up to standard as it has so much potential. I was looking for something similar to Detroit become human mixed in with an almost ideologic logic of what the future of male and female relationships could be. However, I was greeted with a really disappointing book.

Thank you SemiScope and NetGalley for the ARC of Alpha Bots by Ava Lock.

Welcome to the neighborhood of New Stepford. The people who live here are perfect- the men work the day away and then come home at night to their perfect homes and wives. One day at book club, a strange man joins the wives and triggers something in them. The wives learn their lives are a lie- they are AI and their "husbands" jobs are to test them out. A fake marriage, a broken life and Cookie Rifkin breaks free of the mold.

Alpha Bots is like nothing I have ever read before. It was a combination of female empowerment, sci-fi and a lot of misandry. I'm intrigued to see where the rest of the series takes.

this book. wow. I went into it expecting something peculiar. The basic synopsis of Stepford retelling with AI, sounded like it would be a lot of fun. It certainly was.
Growing along with Cookie as she becomes self-aware, and decides not to take shit from Normie, was a fist-pump. you GO, girl. I didn't know what to think of Maggie at first, I was hoping for some gay-I romance, but it turned out to be even more interesting.
Let's talk about those babies. when you get there, just WOW
This was a crazy rollercoaster of a ride that i didn't know i needed to read.

I think this was a really good idea but I didn't really enjoy the way it was written. I mean, it's a fine book but for someone who has read the Murderbot series this kind of is a miss. Even though Murderbot and this is pretty different. Yet I know I would have put this down if it wasn't for the very speeded up audiobook.
So an okay book but I'm not really interested in seeing where the story goes for here.

I think categorizing this in the LGBTQIA genre is a mistake. (Maybe Women's Studies?) This book is out of my usual realm of interest, but I enjoyed it well enough. There is humor, frequent references to horrible treatment of women, but in the context of AI women-- definitely a take of Stepford Wives. (They are in New Stepford, after all.)

Not sure if the author's main intent was to make a statement on the continued misogyny in today's society but that's how it came across to me. I felt it was a little long as it moved from more 'future reality' to complete fantasy in the conclusion.

I really liked the AI facing reality- particularly Cookie's reconciling her robotic identity with her human feelings and (perceived) limitations.

The audio version was well produced and Laci Powers adds to enjoyment with her gifted narration.

I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.