With the rise of artificial intelligence and the uncertainty of the geopolitical moment, it seems appropriate to start 2025 with some surreal fiction.

So how about “Blob: A Love Story,” starring a Taiwanese American named Vi, who stumbles upon a “beige gelatin splotch” with mouth, eyes, and lips, next to a trash can outside a dive bar, takes it home, feeds it and helps it morph into a real man?

That’s the plot summary in brief, and it’s a whole lot weirder than that. First-time novelist Maggie Su has fun letting Vi essentially mold her ideal man — “He doesn’t look like any one movie star but rather a conglomeration of movie stars” — but the story isn’t played entirely for laughs. Creating and interacting with Bob the blob gives Vi plenty of time to think about her own life. She’s uneasy about the way she treats so-called friends and has not yet come to terms with a recent breakup.

In other words, she’s a 20-something trying to figure herself out who has a lot of growing up to do. She dropped out of college and works a dead-end front desk job at the Hillside Inn and Suites. She isn’t very nice to most of the people she spends time with throughout the story — from her co-workers to her family. But nurturing Bob convinces her that fresh starts are possible.

Of course, blobs who transform into humans also develop feelings. It’s our brains that differentiate us from the rest of the animal kingdom, after all. So when Bob escapes Vi’s apartment and meets other people, Vi’s very good looking Frankenstein monster is no longer hers.

Who or what is he, though? That’s a question Su could probably write another book about. In this one, she’s content to leave Vi in a better place than where she started, thanks to a random encounter with a blob. — Rob Merrill, Associated Press

Eddie Winston is 90, but for all practical purposes he is more like 17. Like a teenager, he’s gregarious, gangly but strong and — most importantly — he has yet to enjoy his first kiss.

This unlikely but delightful character is at the heart of Marianne Cronin’s “Eddie Winston is Looking for Love,” an entertaining story filled with all good things — friendship, honor, generosity, humor and, yes, love.

Eddie works in an English charity shop. Every so often, he happens upon a donation that he thinks the giver might want back — old letters, photographs or a special article of clothing. These he smuggles home and stores on the “Eddie shelf,” keeping them in case the giver reconsiders.

When the book opens, a weepy young woman named Bella has brought in a carton of things he knows right away are destined for the Eddie shelf — drawings, clothes and photographs. They belonged to Jake, the love of her life, who has died.

Over time, Bella and Eddie become the best of pals — this pink-haired 24-year-old who works at a supermarket, and this youthful 90-year-old who wears bow ties and has never known love.

Well, that’s not exactly true. He was in love, once, as a young man, with a woman named Bridie. Bridie and Eddie met when he was a doctoral student at the University of Birmingham and Bridie was a librarian there, and it was love at first sight. Bridie was — sadly — married to an indifferent, philandering professor.

Their friendship lasted only a year or so, but once they part ways Eddie gives up on the idea of love. And now, 70 years later, he is starting to rethink that decision. Together, he and Bella begin to heal, getting each other to take risks and rejoin the world.

The book’s energy comes partly from its structure; it bounces between first- person chapters narrated by Eddie and third- person chapters told from a variety of points of view. It moves from present- day to the past, slowly unraveling the backstory of Eddie and Bridie.

Goofy? A bit. Romantic? Sure. Implausible? Who cares? “Eddie Winston is Looking for Love” is great fun. — Laurie Hertzel, Minnesota Star Tribune