Bestselling YA author Melinda Salisbury exposes the dark underbelly of new AI technology in this gripping thriller. Freya desperately wants to be a famous influencer, like her former best friend, Hye-jin, but no matter what she does, her posts flop. Until Freya's stepdad arrives home with AdelAIDE, a home-assistant robot. It quickly becomes clear that AdelAIDE is much more powerful than other home-assistant technology, and the thing AdelAIDE wants most of all is to help her new owners. Especially Freya. AdelAIDE has lots of ideas to help Freya boost her profile and get more likes and followers. But when Freya starts to follow AdelAIDE's more radical advice, things quickly spiral out of control . Particularly suitable for readers aged 11+ with a reading age of 8.
- Four-time Carnegie nominated author Melinda Salisbury is a new and exciting addition to the Barrington Stoke list for 2024. Her first novel, The Sin Eater's Daughter, was the bestselling UK YA debut of 2015 and Her Dark Wings was both a Guardian Children's Book of the Year and the Reading Agency Book of the Year 2022 - Teen readers will relate to themes like stressing over popularity and the pressures related to having an online and social-media presence - Nail-biting suspense and a dreadful sense of threat builds gradually throughout this thriller, keeping readers totally gripped - Follows ECHOSTAR is always listening . as the second in a set of three standalone but connected novels offering fresh, nuanced explorations into the dangers of new technologies - Melinda has been pitched for YALC and will be speaking on a panel at Cheltenham.