"Ensnared" by Rita Stradling

This is a futuristic Beauty and the Beast re-telling where automatons and AI robots are a normal part of life and have taken over many service jobs such as security guards, nurses, gas station attendants, etc. The Beauty in the story is a twenty-something girl named Alainn Murphy whose father is a brilliant inventor of AI robots. Alainn works on a search and rescue team at a ski resort and spends most of her time on the mountain away from her techie father and brother.

The Beast is a wealthy recluse who lives in an AI-run fortress but dreams of forging a relationship with another human being. He orders an advanced AI robot from Alainn's father in the hopes to learn some human interaction. The robot her father creates is the spitting image of Alainn. Since she believes he is not quite finished with the work and might be thrown into jail if he does not deliver on time, she takes the place of the AI robot and goes to Lorccan's tower as a stand-in to provide the needed delay for completing the AI model.

Overall, I thought this book was on point with the Beauty and the Beast re-telling. I liked the household characters, the friendship that Lorccan and Alainn gradually forged and the romance that slowly blossomed. Alainn is a very likable character. She is strong, independent and not afraid to take risks and stand up for what she believes.

In this novel, Stradling utlized the new adult genre trope of a troubled past, and while this is completely appropriate for the Beast, it was not as clear-cut to me why she chose to give such a painful past experience to Alainn aside from falling into the genre trap. The entire backstory of what happened to Alainn was a little fuzzy. Details slowly started to emerge as the story progressed, but I was hoping for a bit more background. The experience also to me did not seem to have left Alainn as scarred as one would think given what happened to her. She kept referring to it as having happened a long time ago. But since she is in her early 20s and she was kidnapped at 17 or 18, I would not call it "a long time ago."

Another thing that I found unbelievable was the fact that Lorccan did not realize that she was human. Alainn's brother at some point in the book explains that most likely Lorccan did know this subconsciously but did not accept it consciously. This seems like a weak explanation to me. Lorccan supposedly knows a lot about AI technology. He is in fact the biggest investor in this area and constantly reviews new proposals and makes funding decisions. So the fact that he cannot recognize a human when he sees one is to me the weakest point in the plot.

Finally, the ending felt a bit rushed and the entire finale during the trial was confusing and not well explained.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and gave it four stars. I liked the AI idea, the discussion of what makes us human, and the characters were very likable. I love Beauty and the Beast and I think this book will definitely appeal to a lot of fans of the original story.

I read an e-ARC of this book provided by NetGalley.com.