Mystery Thriller. Father works on AI project called Ava in computer lab, he goes missing, daughter goes to live with neighbors. Read around 2018. Spoiler.

[Megan]

I've been looking for a book I listened to on Audiobook around 2018.

I believe it was was a fiction in two parts but honestly very well could be two different books.

In one part there is a father and a daughter. He works in a computer lab (maybe in the 80's) and is working on a project I swear was called "Ava." It was like an AI where you could type in questions and get a response. At one point the dad goes missing and the girl goes to live with her neighbors and has always been haunted by his disappearance. At the end of the book she finds out there is a version of him in the computer that she can still talk to and communicate with.

In the other part there is a teenage girl who goes missing while shopping with her friend and the detectives find out who is abducting girls by the actions of their avatar in a video game.

[Joseph]

James Smythe's I Still Dream ticks some of those boxes.

[Kris]

One Goodreads reviewer describes I Still Dream by James Smythe - Joseph's suggestion:

- "We first meet Laura Bow in 1997, when she is 17 years old. She lives with her mother and stepdad, her biological father having disappeared when she was a child. He was a computer genius, and Laura has inherited his talent. She spends all of her free time on Organon, a program she coded herself, which acts as a kind of personal companion and a sounding board for her innermost thoughts. Her efforts catch the eye of Bow, the tech company her father helped found, which is now run by the shady Mark Ocean..."

[Kris]

Megan, is this book for teens or adults?

I copied some book details to the topic header. Feel free to edit it.