I have found a boy YA I like! John M. Cusick takes a burgeoning concept in Japan - pseudo-human companionship - and translates it into American teenspeak. When David's parents and school discover that his technology addiction is so bad that he feels nothing after watching a girl commit suicide on the Web, the guidance counselor proposes a futuristic solution: a Companion. Companions are like the lifelike dolls real people dress up and pal around with, only Companions can speak, eat, touch, and more. Just not that much more. David, characterized deliciously as the tooliest of tools, abandons Rose when he learns she can't sexually satisfy him. Charlie, a classmate of David's, knows she's a Companion and yet together find a sense of humanity.

Cusick weaves in humor, ethos, and pathos in this treaty on how technology both hinders and widens the human experience. He carefully balances the novel to not make it just David's story, just Charlie's story, or even just Rose's story. The one element driving me batty is the lack of resolution of the side plot involving the guidance counselor's relationship with the company producing Companions and the business' back story. Rose tantalizes us with bytes of memory off her harddrive, but we never get to download the whole file. And despite the ambiguous ending, I felt satisfied .