Made For You by Jenna Satterthwaite book review: Reality TV meets Black Mirror

Made For You by Jenna Satterthwaite: The review

Made For You is a love story, but it’s not like any love story you’ve ever read before. Julia meets Josh on The Proposal – a Batchelor-like reality TV show where Josh has to choose one woman from more than a dozen to marry. Julia is desperate to be the one- but so is every other girl in the line-up. Not quite in the same way, though. You see, Julia was made for Josh. Literally. Julia is a synth.

A year later, Julia and Josh’s marriage isn’t as perfect as she hoped it would be. Turns out reality TV isn’t always reality – who knew? Josh has gone missing, and despite her innate “do no harm” programming, Julia is under deep suspicion of having done something to him. Can she find him, or find what has happened to him, before it’s too late?

Told over two timelines, Made For You gripped me right from the start. The “then” timeline walks us through Julia’s time on The Proposal, while the “now” timeline begins on the morning Julia wakes up to discover Josh isn’t there. Instantly, you have questions. Just how has this seemingly perfect couple fallen so far? Has Josh simply left or has something happened to him? Worse, has someone purposefully hurt him?

As the book progresses, you’ll only have more and more questions. The action is perhaps a little slow here: if you prefer fast-paced thrillers, you might find Made For You too much of a slow-burn. Personally, I loved it: the pace fits the story perfectly. It’s fast enough to keep us turning the pages but slow enough for us to get a good feel of the characters and get us asking questions, wondering what on earth is happening.

Of course, Made For You isn’t wholly realistic: it’s about a synth, a humanoid robot, after all. Not just any robot, either: Julia looks and acts entirely human. She has free will, she can feel pain, she needs to eat, drink and sleep and, thanks to an egg donor, she even menstruates and can conceive a child. It’s a lot to believe, but Jenna Satterthwaite has effortlessly created a world that, for whatever reason, I’ve accepted without question. She’s done a fantastic job of making it feel real, too, with politics woven into the fabric of the novel – many people simply can’t accept synths living among them.

Yes, you’ll have questions, and seeing Julia as a possibility, let alone a real person with thoughts and feelings, does require a bit of suspension of disbelief. For me, it came easily – but others might struggle.

Ultimately, this feels like a novel of two halves: first, the exploration of what it means for a synth to live a real, human life, complete with marriage and motherhood; and second, the thriller/whodunnit element of what has happened to Josh. I loved both elements, and I’ve found Julia a fantastic character. She’s flawed, like any of us, and reading about her thoughts, feelings and emotions has been fascinating. The slow burn of discovering where Josh has gone – and uncovering the reality of his and Julia’s relationship is utterly gripping too.

If you like the idea of a thriller with a unique sci-fi element, there’s a lot to love about Made For You. A love story, a futuristic ‘what if’, a thriller – I’ve lapped up every aspect of it, and I look forward to whatever Satterthwaite does next.