1 star / DNF 33%

I tried to read this book to completion but the characters are annoying and especially inappropriate for a book marketed to young adults and tweens. Female characters are catty and self-obsessed, male characters are oblivious. Plot would have been more interesting if the characters themselves were more likable.

DNF at 20%
I could not get into this at all. I had a difficult time connecting with the characters and struggled with the plot. It felt too big to really sink my teeth into.

I had a hard time getting into this one - it seemed very implausible and I found it hard to suspend my disbelief so much. I finished it, but will find it hard to recommend.

This book should have been a great read. I had such high hopes for it just by reading the summary, but it fell so hard that I had a hard time finishing this one. It sounded like it was going to be a great read and it just wasn't at all.

I tried really hard to get into this book but I found that I had a hard time connecting with both the characters and the story line.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Honestly, this is not my usual genre of YA that I read. I'm a big fantasy and kingdoms reader so this was a change. The concept and the beginning started out alright but as time goes on it just got progressively worse. I was also very surprised that it is marketed as being "Disney friendly." It could be seen as inappropriate for the age 14-16, but I also understand that younger kids these days are starting earlier and earlier with drugs, sex, and alcohol. So it's important to be addressed but I felt that this book addressed it in a detrimental way that is more glorifying how they are living their lives. I really wouldn't recommend this book to younger teen readers that are impressionable.

I thought I was in for a simple "humans lose control of ai" horror story. Not so. The word simple shouldn't really be applied to this book. We've got a lot of exploration of character, of inner lives, and the ways we interact with one another. In this case the vehicle that facilitates this exploration happens to be a literal motor vehicle. No my favorite, but it was intriguing.

I went into this, thinking it was about something entirely different than it actually was so I did not enjoy it.

There seems to be some confusion between two books titled AUTONOMOUS: one, referenced here, is a YA sci-fi book written by Andy Marino and published by the Disney Group and the other is a Tor book by Annalee Newitz who is known for her editing work at Ars Technica, io9, and Gizmodo, plus writing for many other publications. The former is intended for 14+ (though School Library Journal suggests grades 10-Up) and the latter is shelved with adult fiction. Marino’s work was scheduled for publication in November and has been postponed (per amazon) to April, while Newitz’s came out in mid-September. Both contain copious swear words and offensive language. Marino's work is being promoted as a fun road trip amongst friends in an automated car, but it misses the mark with references to drinking games and suicidal thoughts. Neither is doing well with Goodreads reviewers: scoring an abysmal 2.31 and a 3.66, respectively. Did Not Finish.

Noteworthy experiences while reading this book: This one had a great premise but it just didn't work out. It seemed that the book's story/plot just didn't know what it wanted to be as a story.

Check out author's other books or related books? No

Recommend this book? No

Notes and Opinions: When I first saw this book I thought it was due out in November but now I see that it has been moved to April. I really hope that the issues with this book are being corrected. I really thought this book was going to be something like Fast and the Furious meets Knight Rider but what I ended up finding was a book that was very confusing. I really feel that this could have been a lot better if it would have covered the topic of responsibly and had a better ending. For me the story and characters just didn't work out for me in this one. I hope that a new ARC is released before it is published so I can try it again.



Go Into This One Knowing: drugs, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, sex

Now here’s the thing about getting an advanced reader’s copy. Sometimes, the reviews are not good, such as the reviews for this novel, and now this book is being reworked as it was meant to be published this month, but is now aiming for 2018. Therefore, my review reflects the unrevised book, not the copy that will hit the shelves in a few months.

First things first, I need to explain something about Autonomous. It was marketed as a 14+ book and as a funny story. Also, when a book comes from Disney, you most likely will expect the book will be appropriate for teenagers to read, even if it says 14+ on the cover - it’s Disney, for goodness’ sake. Autonomous was absolutely not appropriate for youth. There were themes in there that twisted my stomach and that made my heart plummet, and I think I perhaps laughed once in the entire book.

However, if I had picked up this book elsewhere, I would have thought that it was freaking amazing. If the audience had been adults and the book’s teen-targeted content had been edited out, I could see how this would have been a horror/thriller that would have kept me up at night. I assume that the edits will remove all the adult content from the book, which is quite necessary for this to be published by Disney Book Group, but… I keep wondering “what if” this story is edited differently. I loved the car, I loved the social media content, I loved the psychology behind putting four very different people in a car that reads your mind and adapts a road trip to fit the occupant’s needs… and then this car turning dark and reflecting each individual’s darkest secrets… It was a really good ARC. Again, I’m just sad that this manuscript didn’t make it to a different audience.

I’d like to thank Disney Book Group for the free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. I look forward to picking up a copy of the re-edited product, because despite all the bad stuff in the book, I actually enjoyed it.

The ranking for this book:

Humor? Check! I loved the banter between Christina, who is definitely the best character, and William, who is definitely… the main character. Just don’t go in expecting to be laughing constantly, because there are long stretches of boringness without anything interesting.

Creepy sentient car premise? Eh… half a check. There were moments when Otto (the car) was a genuinely complex, worthy antagonist of the book, but the concept was never fleshed out enough. The author was clearly more interested in relationship drama than artificial intelligence drama.

Romance? Nope. No check for you. Melissa and Daniel’s relationship is never shown to be as close as it needed to be for us to feel any kind of emotion at them falling apart. Will they break up? Are they cheating? Do I care? And then there’s William and Christina’s blossoming relationship, which had me interested for about two seconds before it was simply bland.

Friendship? Well, this book failed at romance so obviously it must have — nope, failed at this too. If you’re going to do a book about testing friendships to the limit, you have to commit, and Autonomous didn’t. Sure, things happened to make the characters uncomfortable or angry with each other, but in the end it was like, consequences? What consequences? Christina’s feelings of being left out weren’t explored enough to be compelling, Melissa and Daniel were too busy with Couple Drama™ to be friends at all, and William just floated along wondering why things were going wrong.

Action? Ugh, barely. There were about two and a half scenes that made you worry for someone’s life, and one of them was cut out of the middle of the book and tacked onto the beginning so you would be tricked into thinking you’re starting in the middle of the action, only to flash back to a week before when the story starts. Which is a lazy way of hooking your reader.

Cool cyber hacking stuff? The author sure tried, giving Christina all kinds of gadgets and cool names, but in the end it felt hollow and many things were unexplained.

Nice writing? Nope, Autonomous is exhausting to get through. I ended up skimming pages and complaining a lot in my updates. While I appreciated some choices the author made to avoid writing cliches, it wasn’t enough to salvage the book.

The judges have tallied the score and awarded Autonomous one star for Christina existing and half a star for various other pieces that almost worked.

I couldn't even finish this one, and I generally enjoy this kind of book. Self-driving cars? Cool. Buddies on a road trip learning about themselves and each other? Cool. Those two things together? Super cool. So the premise was definitely interesting, but the book fell short for me in pretty much every area. I didn't find the characters interesting enough to continue reading about, since they completely lacked depth. The writing style was, for me, trying too hard to appeal to teens (and to be honest, maybe it would appeal to teens) and I couldn't get myself to continue reading it. The theme of social media use and creating yourself in your online image is certainly a relevant one these days, but everyone is trying to write a book with that theme (or at least that what it seems like), so you really have to do it well or put a unique spin on it to stand out from the crowd, and this book did not do that either. There are many better YA novels out there these days, so I wouldn't waste your time with this one.

Autonomous has an interesting concept, though the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The story attempts to tackle several serious issues, while also trying to be a humorous novel. This doesn't blend well. It makes it hard to deal with the issues while giving lessons of morality when the book wants to make you laugh out loud. It gets hard to get into the humor with the social issues involved. The book also tries to throw sci-fi in there. It all doesn't work too well. This is unfortunate.

Honestly, I expected more from Autonomous. The premise sounds like this could have been a really interesting story with tons of room for either serious discussions, or light-hearted fun. The problem was that it tried to do both, but with the wrong audience, none of the consequences, and not the right kind of humor.

If the author had just picked either light-hearted humorous book, or serious contemporary/sci-fi, then it would have made the reading experience much more enjoyable. But instead, it's confusing and a little scary thinking about this being marketed to young adults.

There are way too many adult themes that drag down the humorous feel to the book. For starters, the main character almost gets run over in order to win a car, and that's just kind of blown over. Like, a bunch of teenagers could have been killed or seriously injured chasing after a car, and we're just supposed to think it's funny?

In addition, there's sex between minors, underage drinking, use of illegal substances (not just weed), mentions of suicide and cutting, speeding, drag-racing, etc. And all of the above have little to no consequence. They get caught speeding, nothing happens. Drinking underage and doing illegal drugs should have some ending moral that signifies to young children that "NO you shouldn't do this. And if you do, bad things will happen." In addition to all of that, there's fistfights, and a kidnapping of sorts.

DOES THIS SOUND LIKE A HUMOROUS BOOK?

This needs to be marketed, and maybe even edited a bit more, so that it flows better.

Review available at Booklist Online: https://www.booklistonline.com/Autonomous-Andy-Marino/pid=9050543

William wins a contest and gets a self-driving car. Autonomous can do basically anything you can think of. It is the car of the future powered by a ridiculously superior AI. William and his three friends take a road trip across the country in Otto the car. Along the way secrets are revealed, relationships change and they almost get killed.

I almost didn't finish this book, but I really wanted to see how it was going to end. I am not even sure what the point of the whole thing was. Otto learns from his passengers and becomes psychotic, but that brings the friends back together? I am not sure I even care. I didn't really like or care about any of the characters. There were also parts of the story that were so completely over the top that they didn't even really fit in with the rest of it. I would give this one a pass.

I received this book from Netgalley.

Fun story! Definitely for a younger crowd, the plot was slightly juvenile. I have seen better story telling from other ya authors.

Marino's book has an interesting premise, the quintessential teen road trip but with a modern twist, a self-driving wonder car named Autonomous. The concept of the storyline is interesting in itself but the execution lacks some sort of oomph. The main character William is sometimes fleshed out and other times one-dimensional. The other characters are flawed teenagers (which is great - but it's kind of hard to care or sympathize with any of them). At some points, I felt the car was a more interesting feature than the main characters themselves.

DNF at 25%

I found this book to be inappropriate and not as enjoyable as I had originally hoped it would be.