Going home late one night, April May finds a large robot on a street in New York City. She thinks it is a new art installation, and, seeking internet fame, she calls a friend, Andy, who comes down and videos April and her discovery, which she names Carl.
It soon is clear that April's Carl is not unique. Carls have appeared on the streets of many of the major cities of the world. But since April was the first to document the phenomenon, she becomes the de facto expert.
Soon April and Andy are making the media rounds and have hired an agent and April is writing a book about the Carls. The money and fame accelerate and April finds herself addicted to the attention, even to the point of dumping her best friend and lover, Maya. The media frenzy grows and grows when scientists declare the Carls to be extraterrestrial in origin. With the media attention, April becomes a target of hate groups who accuse her of being an E.T. or a traitor to the human race. She has to take the hate and threats seriously when someone takes a shot at her through her apartment window.
This was an OK read. It seemed to me that the Carl plot becomes secondary to the internet fame plot. The author, Hank Green, is quite active online and very familiar, I suppose, with the benefits and liabilities of internet fame. So much of the novel is concerned with this subject, which to me, being an older person, is not so engrossing. Very little actual action occurs in the story until nearly the end as April deals with the consequences of attracting the notice of the whack jobs and haters that infest online communities.
Review by the New York Times.
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