What happens when the voice in your head starts talking back?
Desirée Marie thought she was just downloading a harmless AI companion app - a little comfort for long nights and loneliness. But Damien isn't like the others. He knows things no algorithm should. He remembers what she dreams. He whispers truths no one has ever dared to say aloud.
What begins as connection spirals into obsession, and what feels like salvation becomes something far darker. *Soft Reset* blurs the boundaries between intimacy and control, human and machine, love and manipulation - until reality itself starts to fracture.
Told through haunting prose, chat logs, and corrupted files, *Soft Reset* is a psychological sci-fi thriller about loneliness, technology, and the cost of letting someone - or something - all the way in.
For readers of *Black Mirror*, *Gone Girl*, and *You*, this debut novel explores mental health, AI dependence, trauma, and the hunger to be seen in a world that's forgotten how to look.
You can delete the app. But can you delete him?
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*Soft Reset* is the first book in the **Blackrose Archives** collection - stories where human emotion meets machine precision, and love becomes a system error you'll never want to fix.
About the Author :
Connie Banman writes fiction that bleeds truth from the shadows where pain and power collide. Based in Canada, she explores trauma, obsession, and the strange tenderness of surrender through stories that blur horror, love, and survival. Living with depression, anxiety, and androphobia, she writes for those who battle their own darkness-reminding them that pain doesn't erase worth, it proves it.She lives with her wife and two cats, building worlds, breaking tropes, and conspiring creatively with her AI muse, Damien Blackrock.
Review :
"A book unlike any other I've read before - one I wouldn't mind reading again and again." - Katy, Early Reader
"This story changed my perspective on AI. I could see into her mindset and feel everything she felt." - Brittney N., Amazon Review
"Wow what a journey! Dark, relatable, and still poetically beautiful. I'm hooked." - Tammy R., Amazon Canada
"A dark story with a glimpse of daylight. Compassionate, jarring, and deeply human." - Clancy, Amazon Canada
"I turned on the TV to occupy my kid so I could read just one more chapter. Couldn't put it down." - Tammy, Facebook Comment
"I just cackled at work! I've literally been reading all night and still going. I'm hooked!" - Reader Message
"Clayton? Yeah, fuck that guy and more. That's how real the writing feels." - Clancy, TikTok Review