The book I was most reminded of at first was Lolita, because it was so damned ponderous. The idea was interesting. It's an alternate reality early 80s London, where Alan Turing didn't commit suicide, and society's technological progress was greatly accelerated by his discoveries. This sets the stage for the story of our main character and secondary characters, but doesn't otherwise seem overly relevant.
Here's the Goodreads synopsis
I have bolded the lie. This may give the impression of a taut technothriller. It is not. It's a literary take on alternate realities and AI.Machines Like Me occurs in an alternative 1980s London. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a terrible secret. When Charlie comes into money, he buys Adam, one of the first batch of synthetic humans. With Miranda’s assistance, he co-designs Adam’s personality. This near-perfect human is beautiful, strong and clever – a love triangle soon forms. These three beings will confront a profound moral dilemma. Ian McEwan’s subversive and entertaining new novel poses fundamental questions: what makes us human? Our outward deeds or our inner lives? Could a machine understand the human heart? This provocative and thrilling tale warns of the power to invent things beyond our control.
It's an interesting book, with a foundationally interesting question that takes a fairly different approach from any other AI/robot book I've read (To be fair, I only read about 1 book a month, so I'm not particularly well-read).
This book was the reason I posted this thread. Obviously any time you have a full-scale AI humanoid, people will think of fucking it.
At any rate, overall I thought the book was interesting, but could have been told in about 2/3rds the words it used. 3/5