17 Church Row – James Carol

**Spoiler Alert**

Blurb:
For fans of J. P. Delaney’s The Girl Before comes a thriller that makes us question our relationship with technology and the lengths we would go to, to keep our family safe.

Three years ago, Ethan and Nikki Rhodes suffered a devastating loss. Their four-year-old daughter Grace was tragically killed when she ran from their garden into the path of a car. Ethan, a radio personality, escapes into work, while Nikki quits her job to care for their remaining child, Grace’s twin sister, Bella, who hasn’t spoken since that night.

Trying to give the family a fresh start, Ethan moves them to a revolutionary house designed by the world-famous architect, Catriona Fisher. For the Rhodes’, this is a life-changing move because a key feature of the house is the state of the art security system that allows them to be completely safe from the outside world within their own home.

But what if what they fear most is actually inside the house? What if 17 Church Row isn’t the safe haven that they think it is?

My Thoughts:
It has been three years since one of Nikki and Ethan’s twins died, and now they are trying with difficulty to move on. To help with this they move to 17 Church Road, to a house with state of the art everything! Everything from the doors to the appliances is controlled by a program called Alice, but not everything is as simple as it seems.

I found this book really interesting because it is a commentary on how far AI can go and what limits we should put. But then once AI becomes sentient, should we be in a position to limit that.

What I really enjoyed was that you get to hear from a few different characters throughout and find out what they know and how they have become involved with this house.

This book is quite dark because it talks about the death of a child, and abuse. I found Alice/Cati’s narrative to be really really interesting because she talks about her father and how he tried to kill her and didn’t love her. She clearly sees herself as his daughter but he only sees her as a computer program. This whole narrative I find fascinating.