It was true for Wolfsong, my first book by TJ Klune, and it’s held true for the rest. He has such a way of depicting family: biological and found that just grabs at your heart.

If there’s one word that connects all of his novels, including this one…at least that I’ve read, it’s family. I can’t say this with most books, but I can say it with Klune’s: I laughed, and I cried. In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune is positively leaking with humor and heart. “I’ll read about 10–15% a day.” Ha! I finished it in 2 days. In the Lives of Puppets was the latter for me. Others, you devour because you need to know what will happen, or else it will gnaw at you in your dreams. Some books, you read slowly, taking your time with them and allowing the words to really sink in. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams.

When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio–a past spent hunting humans. In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots-fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention.

In the Lives of Puppets by T.J. Klune