Animal Instinct

The world has stopped. But Rachel is just getting started...

It’s spring of 2020 and Rachel Bloomstein--mother of three, recent divorcée, and Brooklynite--is stuck inside. But her newly awakened sexual desire and lust for a new life refuse to be contained. Leaning on her best friend Lulu to show her the ropes, Rachel dips a toe in the online dating world, leading to park dates with younger men, flirtations with beautiful women, and actual, in-person sex. None of them, individually, are perfect . . . hence her rotation.

But what if one person could perfectly cater to all her emotional needs?
Driven by this possibility, Rachel creates Frankie, the AI chatbot she programs with all the good parts of dating in middle age . . . and some of the bad. But as Rachel plays with her fantasy to her heart’s content, she begins to realize she can’t reprogram her ex-husband, her children, her friends, or the roster of paramours that’s grown unwieldy. Perhaps real life has more in store for Rachel than she could ever program for herself.

Amy Shearnis the award-winning author of the critically-acclaimed novels Dear Edna Sloane, Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here. She has worked as an editor for Medium, JSTOR, and Condé Nast, among other organizations, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, ＂Modern Love＂ column, Slate, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, O, The Oprah Magazine, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, The Millions, The Rumpus, and other publications. Amy Shearn has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her two children.