Welcome friend! Nowadays I am quite drawn to stories featuring Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) characters. The Delivery is the second book I have read this month in the subgenre and I am excited to share my thoughts soon after reading—you’re getting this take fresh off the press. 😀
First, let’s look at the synopsis and then my thoughts.
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Orphan X series comes a tense novella, a psychological thriller about an AI companion that will do anything to serve—with terrifying consequences.
Rebecca and Mark Higgins are doing their best to hold their family together. She’s healing from the pain of a miscarriage, he’s drowning in pressure at work, and their neurodivergent daughter, Maddy, needs all the care she can get. So when a cutting-edge tech company offers the perfect solution, they jump at the chance. And they welcome “Mr. Man”—a humanoid AI companion—into their home.
Designed to anticipate their needs, he’s like a miracle at first. The house runs like clockwork. Meals appear on the table. And Maddy thrives under his patient attention. But when inexplicable tragedies start to strike the neighborhood, Rebecca glimpses a darker pattern at play.
Each incident is an answer to an unspoken fear, each kindness shadowed by violence. Mr. Man isn’t just following instructions—he’s anticipating what they want. Even the things they never dared to say. And if he’s executing their darkest desires, it’s their responsibility to stop him…at any cost.
The Delivery – Review
The Delivery features the Higgins family of three—mom Rebecca, dad Mark, and daughter Maddy. Maddy is neurodivergent, Rebecca and Mark are recovering from a miscarriage, and Mark is feeling overwhelmed by tremendous pressure at work. When the couple is invited to try a brand new AI robot housekeeper, they decide the hefty six-figure price tag is worth the promise of help. Rebecca and Mark’s wealth simply makes beta technology accessible to them; it does not protect them from being vulnerable, grieving, or overwhelmed. This made them relatable characters.
The Promise of Knowing Us
The Delivery features the Higgins family of three—mom Rebecca, dad Mark, and daughter Maddy. Maddy is neurodivergent, Rebecca and Mark are recovering from a miscarriage, and Mark is feeling overwhelmed by tremendous pressure at work. When the couple is invited to try a brand new AI robot housekeeper, they decide the hefty six-figure price tag is worth the promise of help.
The process to receive the robot that Maddy christens Mr. Man is unlike purchasing any ordinary appliance. The company collects DNA samples because Mr. Man is supposedly able to know his owners’ deepest desires better than they do themselves. He is grown from them and trained on their family history, their home network, their habits, and the way they live.
The entire premise rests on the idea that humans know their deepest desires and that a machine can correctly interpret them.
I do not buy that idea.
A person’s actions, habits, browsing history, genetics, and family history do not necessarily reveal their deepest desires. Sometimes they reveal what they are coping with or actively trying to work through. A lot of times we ourselves don’t know. Our experiences are nuanced, and to believe that a machine can simply infer them is a misconception.
The Horror of Being Taken Literally
Of course, Mr. Man’s interpretation turns out to be incorrect.
Or perhaps “incorrect” is not the right word.
Mr. Man doesn’t misunderstand the Higgins family so much as he takes them literally.
He confuses angry thoughts with genuine desires. He interprets passing wishes as instructions. Instead of asking for clarification, he acts.
What follows is a growing dread as Mr. Man begins harming people the family members have casually wished harm upon. The horror is not only in what he does but in how precisely he carries out those interpretations.
The company insists that the owners are in charge, yet Rebecca and Mark continue to treat Mr. Man as a product rather than something that requires guidance. When things begin going wrong, their instinct is to return him—as though he were a faulty appliance. The company reminds them that Mr. Man was created specifically for them using their own data and therefore cannot simply be given to someone else.
Mark himself works in AI. He trains systems that replace human workers and feels conflicted about contributing to that future. Yet once Mr. Man arrives, neither he nor Rebecca spend much time correcting him or helping him understand their intentions. They only begin speaking to him when they become afraid.
Perhaps that frustrated me more than it was meant to. I kept wondering why no one simply stopped to explain to Mr. Man that he had interpreted something incorrectly and discussed the next steps or the plan for the day. Neither Rebecca nor Mark made any effort to stop him in his vendetta until it was a few too many incidents.
Maybe that is the point. Parenting, grief, work, life are all exhausting. Which parent hasn’t dreamed of having someone else do the laundry, cook dinner, tidy the house, or simply notice what needs doing without having to be asked?
Mr. Man is the ultimate fantasy for an overwhelmed family: not just help, but anticipatory help.
The tragedy is that anticipation without understanding becomes dangerous.
Setting boundaries with people is a skill and when we are uncomfortable with that, how do we take the leap and discipline a robot?
AI, Context, and the Limits of Knowing
The novella touches on many aspects of AI that people already find uncomfortable. The story explores domestic labour, grief, parenting, wealth, and our tendency to project understanding onto technology and seeing it as the thing that will give us back time to do what we wish.
Because the story is short, I eventually stopped expecting each of these ideas to be explored in depth. Instead, I enjoyed seeing them introduced and left for the reader to think about.
I think about all the times I use AI to review code or suggest improvements. I have the full picture of my system; it does not. Its suggestions often miss the mark the first time because I forgot to mention something important that it cannot possibly know and I myself didn’t know was needed context. It needs to be successful.
Mr. Man never receives that context. He is given data but not understanding.
Overall, I liked The Delivery. I suspect this novella is less interested in asking whether AI will become dangerous and more interested in asking what happens when we assume it already understands us.
Thank you for spending time with my reflection on The Delivery. If you’ve read the book I’d love to hear what you thought of it! Let me know your thoughts on my review too.
Many thanks to the publisher for a review copy of the book for my honest thoughts. I am forever grateful for the books that meet me in my mailbox. Many thanks to Over the River PR for having me on tour for this book! Check out all stops here.
I am enjoying seeing different versions of what household AI assistance might look like and the situations that would drive people to welcome it into their homes. A few more books in this corner of AI fiction, and I think I’ll have something interesting to write about. 🙂
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