Noah Chinn Reviews: The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney

If you woke up in the body of a robot, having died years before, who are you really? You’re not the deceased, not really. At best, you’re a simulation. Yet you have their memories and are autonomous. You exist. You think. You feel. But can you seriously consider taking over the life they once had? And what if the circumstances of your predecessor’s death aren’t exactly what they appear to be?

The Perfect Wife by JP Delaney takes this idea and uses it in a story you have probably seen before. A woman wakes up with little memory, married to a loving husband, but having suffered a tragedy and only regaining themselves years later. Then they start to learn there are things she doesn’t know about her past, and her husband isn’t telling her everything…

Usually, this kind of story involves amnesia or a coma, but here the protagonist is dead before the story even starts, and what we have is her… well, what is she? Her husband, a tech giant beyond the likes of Gates or Musk, says he was obsessed with bringing her back. That she was everything to him. That she was the perfect wife. But is there more to it than that?

The setting is what I like to call “present day with a quantum leap.” The idea of a ComBot (companion robot) is a quantum leap achievement far out of our present-day capabilities, yet the book is riddled with contemporary references to technology and culture, often using present-day or recent past examples to illustrate a concept or draw a comparison…