Culpability by Bruce Holsinger Review (⭐⭐⭐☆☆ 3/5) – A Brilliant Premise That Loses Its Nerve
If you tell me a book is about a self-driving car that crashes and kills two people, and then throw in AI ethics, autonomous vehicles, and the question of who should be blamed when artificial intelligence makes life-or-death decisions... congratulations, you already have my attention. 🤖🚗💥
I went into Culpability expecting a tense techno-thriller full of impossible moral dilemmas. Instead... I got a family drama.
Not that family dramas are bad. But when you promise me AI ethics, I don't really want to spend the second half wondering who is hiding what family secret.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆ (3/5)
📚 Book Information
Title: Culpability
Author: Bruce Holsinger
Published: 2025
Genre: Literary Fiction, Family Drama, Contemporary Fiction, Techno-Mystery
My Rating: ⭐⭐⭐☆☆
⚠️ Trigger Warnings
Death
Fatal car accident
Grief
Bullying
OCD
Mental illness
Substance use
Sexual content
Family conflict
AI warfare discussions
🚨 Spoiler Warning 🚨
This review contains FULL SPOILERS, including the ending and major twists.
You've been warned. 😊
What Is Culpability About?
The Cassidy-Shaw family is traveling in their SensTrek self-driving minivan when tragedy strikes.
Seventeen-year-old Charlie is sitting in the driver's seat supervising the autonomous system while everyone else is distracted by laptops, phones, work, or social media (which... honestly feels painfully realistic).
Suddenly the van swerves into oncoming traffic.
Two elderly passengers—Phil and Judith Drummond—are killed instantly.
Charlie survives.
His family survives.
But everyone's left asking the same question:
Who is actually responsible?
The driver?
The AI?
The company?
Or everyone?
🤖 The Premise Had Me Hooked
This is exactly the kind of modern story I love.
We're getting closer and closer to living alongside AI, autonomous vehicles, and technology making decisions for us every day.
So naturally I assumed this book was going to dive headfirst into questions like:
Should AI sacrifice two people to save five?
Can an algorithm make moral choices?
Who is legally responsible when AI fails?
Can software actually "choose" who lives?
I was honestly expecting something that would leave me questioning autonomous vehicles for weeks.
Instead...
...the book sort of waves at those ideas before wandering off into another direction. 😅
👨👩👧👦 Somehow It Becomes a Family Drama
As the story progresses, the accident slowly becomes less important.
Instead we spend much more time on:
family secrets
parenting disagreements
marital tension
Charlie's bad decisions
Lorelei's career
Noah's jealousy
Alice's guilt
None of these storylines are poorly written.
Bruce Holsinger is clearly an excellent writer.
I just kept waiting for the novel to circle back to the fascinating AI questions it introduced...
...and it never really did.
🤖 The Ethical AI Discussion Never Really Pays Off
One thing I kept expecting never happened.
I thought we were eventually going to learn that the AI consciously prioritized Noah's family over the elderly couple.
Maybe it calculated:
"Two elderly passengers versus an entire younger family."
Or perhaps it made some impossible utilitarian calculation.
That would have been SUCH an interesting conversation.
Instead...
Nope.
The AI ethics discussions stay mostly theoretical.
The actual crash turns out to be much less morally complicated than I expected.
And honestly?
That felt like a missed opportunity.
🤔 The Ending Left Me Scratching My Head
This was probably my biggest issue.
Near the end we discover something incredibly important.
It wasn't simply Charlie looking away.
Alice had texted Charlie.
She then screamed after seeing him distracted by his phone, causing Charlie to panic.
Charlie instinctively jerked the steering wheel.
By doing so, he overrode the autonomous driving system, which caused the fatal collision.
So naturally I thought...
"Okay, Charlie is definitely going to shoulder at least part of the legal responsibility."
But...
that's not what happens.
Instead the district attorney concludes that the AI system was at fault, and IntelliGen settles with the victims' family.
I honestly wasn't convinced.
Charlie was texting.
Charlie manually grabbed the wheel.
Charlie overrode the autonomous system.
So why does the legal blame seem to fall almost entirely on the software?
Maybe I missed something, but that resolution didn't quite add up for me.
📖 Full Plot Summary (Spoilers)
The Cassidy-Shaw family is traveling to Charlie's final lacrosse tournament using their autonomous SensTrek minivan. Charlie supervises the self-driving system while Noah works on his laptop and Lorelei, Alice, and Izzy are distracted in the back.
Alice suddenly screams.
Charlie jerks the wheel.
The van crashes into an oncoming vehicle, killing Phil and Judith Drummond.
Although Charlie survives physically unharmed, the family begins falling apart emotionally.
Police investigate whether Charlie or the autonomous driving software caused the accident.
Charlie spirals into drinking, smoking, and reckless behavior while Noah desperately tries to shield him from criminal charges.
Meanwhile, Lorelei—an internationally known AI ethics expert—becomes increasingly obsessed with understanding exactly what happened.
The family vacations in Virginia, where they meet billionaire tech executive Daniel Monet, whose company develops AI technology.
Noah becomes convinced Lorelei is hiding an affair with Monet.
Instead, she is secretly consulting for Monet's company under a strict non-disclosure agreement, helping design the ethical decision-making algorithms used in autonomous vehicles.
While on vacation, Charlie begins spending time with Monet's daughter Eurydice.
One night she convinces Charlie to take her sailboat out after giving him MDMA.
A storm throws Eurydice overboard, and she disappears overnight.
Charlie is found unconscious on the drifting boat while everyone assumes the worst.
Fortunately, Eurydice survives after making it ashore.
Meanwhile Detective Morrissey continues investigating the original crash.
Alice finally reveals she saw Charlie texting moments before the collision.
She screamed to warn him about the approaching vehicle instead of telling their parents Charlie was distracted.
Later digital evidence confirms Alice had actually been texting Charlie herself, contributing to the distraction.
Eventually prosecutors conclude the SensTrek AI system bears legal responsibility for the collision rather than Charlie.
The victims' family reaches a settlement with IntelliGen.
Lorelei finally explains to Noah that she has secretly spent two years helping Daniel Monet improve the very algorithm controlling the self-driving system.
Even worse, she learns Monet has adapted her research for military weapons despite her intentions to create safer civilian technology.
The Pentagon later offers Lorelei a position developing AI-powered defensive drones.
Instead of accepting, Noah encourages her to write publicly about AI ethics so ordinary people can understand the risks.
Charlie postpones college and struggles emotionally with everything that has happened.
The novel ends with Noah grieving the future Charlie lost—not because he died, but because one terrible moment permanently changed the course of his life.
💭 Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed the first half of this novel.
The writing is excellent.
The pacing is good.
The premise is fantastic.
But somewhere along the way, it feels like the book loses confidence in its own most interesting idea.
Instead of diving deeper into the ethical nightmare of autonomous AI making life-and-death decisions, it shifts toward family relationships and personal guilt.
There's certainly value in that story too...
...I just don't think it's the story I signed up for.
Maybe that's why I walked away feeling a little disappointed.
The ingredients for a truly unforgettable novel were all here.
It just never quite cooked the meal I was expecting. 🍳🤖
📖 If You Liked Culpability, Try These
Machines Like Me — Ian McEwan
Klara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro
The Perfect Wife — J.P. Delaney
Upgrade — Blake Crouch
Daemon — Daniel Suarez
The Circle — Dave Eggers
Wrong Place Wrong Time — Gillian McAllister
⭐ Final Rating: 3/5 Stars
A fascinating, timely premise with plenty to think about, but for me it slowly drifted away from the very questions that made it so compelling in the first place. I kept waiting for the AI ethics to take center stage, and instead got a family drama that never fully capitalized on its brilliant setup. Still an engaging read, just not quite the one I was hoping for. 🤖📚
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