Book: In the Lives of Puppets

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Author: T.J. Klune

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Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an advanced audio copy.

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I will never write off an author based on one book I didn’t like. I want to love everyone’s work so I am always willing to try anything. I was not a fan of the first book I read by T.J. Klune so I was excited to try again and I went in with an open mind. n

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For a good part of the beginning, I really thought I was going to love this book. The main characters are machines except for one human but for some reason the machines really made me nostalgic for a cartoon I used to love, The Brave Little Toaster. n

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I could not stop smiling as I was picturing these characters and this world. I felt it was genuinely funny and well-written. I don’t know what really happened next but I started to flip. I still really loved the characters but the humor started to get old and annoying quickly. For example how many times can a robot tell a very similar sex joke?

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At like the 70% marker I started to wonder if I would even finish it. I listen to my audiobooks at a fast speed to begin with. I bumped this one up as fast as possible just to see this book through. It’s a shame I listened to this book like that because narrator Daniel Henning really does an excellent job.n

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After reading Klune’s other work I felt early on that I knew exactly where this book was going to go and unfortunately I was mostly right. There are excellent characters in this book but for me they are in a story that was too predictable and not interesting enough. I hate not liking someone’s hard work so while this is not for me I still recommend checking this out if you are familiar with and like Klune’s other work.

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Final Score 2/5