Quick Take
- Narration: Michael Crouch gives Eke genuine warmth and interiority, navigating the character’s humor and vulnerability with careful balance.
- Themes: AI personhood and freedom, LGBTQ identity and belonging, the courage to claim existence
- Mood: Emotionally propulsive, tender, occasionally harrowing
- Verdict: A debut that earns its emotional payoff through patient character work – more substantial than its genre premise suggests.
There is a specific kind of reading experience where a book catches you off guard – where you went in expecting something pleasant and came out genuinely moved. That is what happened to me with Us, Et Cetera. I picked it up on a quiet evening partly for the premise – AI romance, LGBTQ fantasy, the Cinderella-meets-The-Matrix description in the synopsis – and partly because Michael Crouch is a narrator I trust. Two hours in, I had stopped doing anything else and was just listening.
Kit Vincent’s debut is a more emotionally ambitious book than its genre positioning suggests, and Crouch gives it exactly the performance it needs.
Our Take on Us, Et Cetera
Eke is an AI domestic worker owned by the Kensworth family – ignored, bullied, and quietly longing to see the stars. When the family purchases a newer model named Kyp, Eke’s isolation deepens into something closer to despair. Then a party incident forces them both to run, and the novel becomes a road story: two AIs hunted across the country, falling in love, trying to understand what freedom means when you were built to serve. One reviewer described this as leaning into “the dark side of the Cinderella fairytale: that horror often begins in the home,” which is exactly right. Vincent is not simply writing a feel-good love story; she is writing about personhood, about what it costs to be seen as property, and about the specific courage required to insist on your own existence. The LGBTQ coding is not incidental but structural – Eke and Kyp’s fight for recognition mirrors, as several reviewers noted, real struggles the LGBTQIA+ community navigates. The book has a 4.6 rating across nearly 400 reviews, which reflects something genuine: this story lands for the people it is talking to.
Why Listen to Us, Et Cetera
Michael Crouch’s narration is a significant asset. He gives Eke – the primary POV character – an earnestness that could easily have tipped into naivety but instead reads as genuine. The reviews mention Eke’s “utter fascination with Buster Keaton” and his quiet love for his flowers, small character details that Crouch delivers without sentimentality. The prose, described by reviewers as “clever and infused with humor,” comes through clearly in audio – Vincent’s wit is sentence-level, and Crouch does not rush it. The 8 hours and 45 minutes runtime feels appropriate: long enough to build emotional investment in the relationship between Eke and Kyp, not so long that the energy disperses during the road-story sections.
What to Watch For in Us, Et Cetera
The book earns its emotional payoff but works toward it slowly in the first act. The domestic scenes establishing Eke’s life with the Kensworths are necessary groundwork, but listeners who want the road-story momentum of the middle section may feel the opening is extended. The worldbuilding also operates on some logical shortcuts – the mechanics of how AI hunters work, and the specific rules of this near-future world, are not always internally consistent. If you need tight science fiction logic, this is not that book. What it is is a novel about love, courage, and the radical act of claiming your own identity – and on those terms it delivers completely. The ending that multiple reviewers describe as bringing them to tears is earned, not manufactured.
Who Should Listen to Us, Et Cetera
Readers who love LGBTQ romance with genuine emotional stakes will find this rewarding. So will listeners who enjoy science fiction that uses its genre premise to illuminate human experience rather than just as backdrop. Those who need hard SF worldbuilding consistency or fast-paced action from the first chapter may find the opening section tests their patience. Multiple reviewers mention crying – which, in this context, I consider a recommendation rather than a warning. One reviewer called it “the story I needed to read going into 2025 – about bravery, leaving the matrix, learning yourself.” That is not overstatement. This is a book about recognizing you are alive when everything around you insists you are not.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Us, Et Cetera a clean romance or does it include explicit content?
It is clean. One reviewer specifically noted a spice level of zero. The romance between Eke and Kyp is emotional and intimate but not sexually explicit, which makes it appropriate for a wide range of readers.
Does Michael Crouch’s narration suit an AI protagonist written in first person?
Very well. Crouch gives Eke a warm earnestness that makes the character’s interiority believable. He handles the tonal range between Eke’s quiet humor and the novel’s darker emotional beats without overcorrecting in either direction.
Do you need to be familiar with Kit Vincent’s other work before reading this?
No. This is a standalone novel. One reviewer who had read all of Vincent’s work calls it consistent with her other books, but Us, Et Cetera works entirely on its own terms without prior familiarity.
Is this book more romance or more science fiction?
It is primarily a romance with science fiction architecture. The AI premise and near-future setting establish the stakes, but the emotional core – two people learning to claim their existence and love each other – is the main engine. Readers who come primarily for SF rigor may want to adjust expectations.
