ANTICIPATION

An orphaned British teen teams up with a secret coalition to stop a powerful piece of technology from falling into the wrong hands.

Having lost her mother years before, 17-year-old Riya Sudame finds her life turned upside down when a plane carrying her father, Sanjay, and his Russian business partner, co-founders of Predictive Technologies, crashes. A grieving Riya receives a cryptic letter from her dad, forwarded by his solicitors, which names two trusted associates and nominates her as a Keyholder. She’ll join a clandestine group entrusted to oversee her father’s greatest and most dangerous invention, the Anticipation Machine—AI that accurately predicts people’s future behavior. But one of the Keyholders is a traitor who has sold their names to Jim Booker, a social media mogul who will stop at nothing to acquire this technology. On the run from Booker and his goons, Riya must rely on a hacker, a spoiled rich kid, and predictive AI itself to help identify the traitor and outwit the bad guys. The thrilling plot will grab readers immediately, and the twists will keep them engaged. The discussion of morality in AI is timely, but it never devolves into an indictment of tech itself. Instead, Taylor presents a thought-provoking and much-needed look at social media and the ability of its algorithms to influence users. Riya and her father read as South Asian, and there’s diversity among supporting characters.

A chilling peek into the future of predictive technology.