Eager Series by Helen Fox

It's the end of the 21st century where technocrats rule and robots take care of humans’ every need. Your house watches you, knows your secrets, and talks to you. And your closest friend can be—a machine? Gavin Bell and his teenage sister Fleur come from a middle-class family. Their much-loved, old-fashioned robot, Grumps, is running down and can’t be repaired, so a scientist friend loans them EGR3, an experimental new robot to help Grumps... moreIt's the end of the 21st century where technocrats rule and robots take care of humans’ every need. Your house watches you, knows your secrets, and talks to you. And your closest friend can be—a machine? Gavin Bell and his teenage sister Fleur come from a middle-class family. Their much-loved, old-fashioned robot, Grumps, is running down and can’t be repaired, so a scientist friend loans them EGR3, an experimental new robot to help Grumps. EGR3, known as Eager, learns from his experiences, as a child would. He feels emotions—wonder, excitement, and loss. When the ultra high-tech, eerily human BDC4 robots begin to behave suspiciously, Eager and the Bells are drawn into a great adventure that is sometimes dark and often humorous. As Eager’s extraordinary abilities are tested to the limit, he will try to find the answer to this question: What does it mean to be alive?From the Hardcover edition. less

Eager comes out of hiding regularly to visit his old friends, the Bell family, and with him comes his 'nephew' Jonquil, Professor Ogden's newest, and formidably intelligent invention. Jonquil is a tinselly structure that can infinitely change shape. He is impatient, curious, always wants to be in the middle of things - and quickly out of control. Fleur Bell is now grown up, with a daughter, Ju; her old friend, Marcia has a son, Finbar... moreEager comes out of hiding regularly to visit his old friends, the Bell family, and with him comes his 'nephew' Jonquil, Professor Ogden's newest, and formidably intelligent invention. Jonquil is a tinselly structure that can infinitely change shape. He is impatient, curious, always wants to be in the middle of things - and quickly out of control. Fleur Bell is now grown up, with a daughter, Ju; her old friend, Marcia has a son, Finbar. Fleur's husband works in a space station, and things take a very worrying turn when he appears not to be his usual self during his regular conversations with the family on the go-between. Before long, Eager and Jonquil, with the help of Ju and Finbar, are locked into another quirky mystery adventure in search of the truth...To complicate matters further, for Eager the human world is even more bewildering than ever... less