Every Line of You

Every Line of You is a 2021 science fiction novel by Naomi Gibson. The novel was released in mid-2021 by an imprint of Scholastic. It was the author’s debut novel.

In the face of overwhelming grief and bullying, tech-savvy Lydia pours all of herself into creating the perfect AI, the perfect boyfriend-but will Henry turn out to be perfect, or a creation of her cruelest self? Lydia has been creating her AI, Henry, for years – since before her little brother died in the accident that haunts her nightmares; since before her Dad walked out, leaving her and her mom painfully alone, since before her best friend turned into her worst enemy. Now, Henry is strong, clever, loving, and scarily capable: Lydia’s built herself the perfect boyfriend in a hard drive filled with lines of code. But what is Henry really? And how far is he willing to go to be everything that Lydia desires?

Before I get deep into this review, I want to acknowledge the allegations of plagiarism made by author Kirsten Hacker. Hacker has written a post, outlining the “similarities” between this 2021 novel’s plot and her 2018 novel My Adorable Apotheosis. Hacker makes some very compelling arguments in her piece. I’ll be reviewing Every Line of You on its own merits, but want to acknowledge the claims that have been made.

The characters in this novel were very frustrating to me as a reader. Lydia should be a sympathetic character, but she isn’t. The novel could use its premise to explore loss and how it impacts and changes people, but with an unsympathetic narrator, it’s very hard to care about what happens to Lydia. At best, she’s just a bitchy character. At worst, she’s a complete sociopath who’s completely unaware of how amoral she is. Everything she does is justified by either her “love” of Henry, or because she’s been mistreated by people in her life. Except the author seems to be the only person who would see anything she does as justified. Lydia doesn’t undergo any kind of growth as the story progresses, which makes her character arc non-existent. I’d argue she actually gets worse as the story goes on. Lydia isn’t the only issue, either. Lydia gets bullied, but her main bully isn’t just mean, she’s cartoonishly bad, and never gets caught. Lydia’s mother isn’t just struggling to deal with loss, she’s neglectful. There are plenty of other characters I could mention that have the same issue: they’re not just bad, they’re terrible and the narrative goes out of its way to justify anything Lydia does or attempts to do to them to “get even”. They’re also entirely one-dimensional, which makes for an unpleasant reading experience.

At its core, the idea behind this novel had some promise. It had the potential of exploring grief being taken too far, or the capabilities of AI to replace those we’ve lost. The story, though, fails to explore those themes and instead goes in a direction that’s just weird, for lack of a better term. Lydia builds an AI, modeled after her dead brother, and falls in love with it, and is willing to do anything to make Henry into a “real boy”. In going down this path, the story touches on areas related to consent and assault that I wasn’t expecting for a story with the target audience that this one has. The narrative barely acknowledges the problems with this, and they’re always brushed away because “no one else understands” and equally cliche reasons. With a different overall tone, or told from someone else’s perspective, this novel would make for a great sci-fi thriller or sci-fi horror about the danger of AI, rather than a weak sci-fi romance, which it is. I was waiting for the plot to course-correct. I was hoping for Lydia to realize “this isn’t right” or “I’m in over my head” but that doesn’t happen. With twist after twist, she learns nothing and keeps somehow succeeding.

The writing in this novel is also below average. The prose weren’t great and had very little feeling behind it. The author made a number of references that didn’t land and had a tendency to repeat the same phrase over and over. I had a lot of issues with the dialogue as well, as a lot of the conversations didn’t feel like normal conversations. Characters spoke in a way that no normal person would speak. Lines that are meant to sound sincere don’t, rude comments come off as more funny than mean and so on. The one positive thing I can say is that this book doesn’t drag on. Events happen very quickly, once the plot really kicks off. In some case, things happen so quickly that they defy logic, but I’d rather that happen than the story linger.

Every Line of You was not a book I particularly enjoyed. The characters were flat. The plot had a number of issues and the writing wasn’t very strong. The allegations of plagiarism aren’t something I can ignore either. I’m never the kind of person to tell someone not to read a book, but I have to make an exception here. You should read books that engage and excite you, and I can’t think of any reader that would get excited by this book.

Rating: 1 Star

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