Animal Instinct (by Amy Shearn)

From the ToB longlist. This book is about a character named Rachel Bloomstein (which is kinda funny if you're a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fan) who is going through a divorce during the early days of the Covid pandemic. She has a lot of sex.

The blurb suggests a central part of the book is Rachel creating an AI chatbot but that part totally falls flat.  The chatbot seems extremely badly programmed and keeps randomly insulting her yet she "loves talking to it."  Maybe it's deliberately clunky because AI was clunkier in 2020, but "don't go on an insulting tirade about me" should kind of be in the 1.0 version?  I also viscerally dislike pandemic books.  I lived it, I don't want to relive it, thanks.

And yet I kept reading because I found her friendships, her backbone when it came to her awful ex-husband, her (bi-)sexual escapades, and her musings on identity to be interesting. I liked the character,  I rooted for her, in many ways I related to her.  I don't know how likely it is to be on the shortlist, and I didn't love it, but I did enjoy it.