Review: Catfishing on Catnet by Naomi Kritzer

Rating: 4/5
Source: eARC from Netgalley for review
Genre: YA sci-fi thriller
Pages: 288

Blurb: Steph and her mom are constantly on the run, moving every few months to hide from her stalker dad. She finds friends on CatNet, which it turns out is run by a sentient AI called CheshireCat. CheshireCat starts taking actions to protect Steph from her father, but eventually screws up so that Steph must go rescue CheshireCat.










Overall review: 

I really liked this book! I've had a string of not-great reads for review so this was a very welcome change. This is the first thriller I've read in a very long time or ever, and it was great at that while also being super heartfelt. 

The Good:

Firstly, I loved the perspectives - in particular the first-person AI narration in some of the chapters. The book opened with a chapter from the AI which is what really hooked me and made me regret waiting so long to read it. I also loved that that meant I could mostly trust the AI rather than fearing it'd turn out to be the stereotypical bad guy AI. The idea is that CheshireCat is an AI that insead of having a particular moral code cares about individual people - its friends - which really 'humanised' them to me. 

The main perspective is Steph, told in first-person present, but there are also chapters from the AI (often first-person past - didn't know you could just have different tenses like that, but it was cool that those chapters would offer a very different perspective on what had just happened), and chapters full of messages sent in their groupchat on CatNet, which I enjoyed because I like epistolary things like that and they make reading fly by. 

CheshireCat was a very interesting character in general, partly because they were so powerful in some ways (could get into nearly anyone's unsecured phone, security camera etc) but so weak in others (no body). This gave them interesting ethical dilemmas, like whether it was okay to use their immense knowledge and spying ability to intervene on a friend's behalf - even when the friend didn't ask for it. I really loved the idea of an AI that cares.

As you'd hope in a book like this, the author showed good knowledge of tech overall, with little details like sshing into a server and phone tracking. I also thought the online chat was realistic. The near-future setting (so there are lots of drones and self-driving cars and robot teachers) was fun too. 

I was kept guessing as to who was really the villain for a large portion of the book, in that good way where you're not just unsure because you don't have enough information but where you keep being given really strong but conflicting evidence on both sides - was her father dangerous or was her mother just crazy? It was an important question because obviously if her dad's incredibly dangerous they have to stay away from him, but if not her mom is just constantly uprooting Steph's life for no reason.

There's a lot of LGBT rep, and I liked the glimpse of an f/f relationship we see. It was also funny how it matched my experience of being part of a community where you barely know any straight people.

The Bad:

I can't go into detail because of spoilers, but there's something her mam has that other people want, a key to world domination, that seemed a bit over the top and unnecessary as motivation. It was also weird that this very important laptop wasn't better-protected.

The conflict ended somewhat earlier than I'm used to, in the early 90-s %, and I was dismayed to discover that this seems to be the first book in a series. I'm very fond of standalones, but to be fair the author does wrap up this story quite well and just leave one small thread for the future, so it's not a cliffhanger or anything. And I did enjoy the book so I might be convinced to read a series...

Finally, I felt it went on a bit much about gender identity, with one of the non-binary characters repeatedly saying awfully didactic things like 'Shakespeare used they/them pronouns, you know!' at inappropriate times - but then, I suppose that probably is accurate to the character!

In summary

I would definitely recommend this to YA lovers in your life, especially if they're gay and/or into tech or online communities, and even if - like me - they don't normally read thrillers.