You Weren’t Meant to Be Human Review | Horror Book Review

Genres: Horror, Queer, LGBT, Science Fiction, Adult
Pages: 336
Format: Ebook | Libby
Rating:

Initial Thoughts

Sometimes, I can be very easily influenced. One day, I happened to be scrolling on Twitter (it will always be Twitter to me), and someone tweeted about how You Weren’t Meant to Be Human was equally traumatizing, so good, and mentally disturbing.

I get a lot of my book recommendations from TikTok, and it’s kind of known that Twitter is a little more uppity with its reading tastes. This post had a decent amount of views and engagement, so I thought, Let’s see what this book is about, since Twitter is supposedly home to “higher-quality” book recommendations. (Don’t get it twisted, I loved getting recs from BookTok.)

In this You Weren’t Meant to Be Human review, I’ll share why this horror novel ultimately didn’t work for me despite all the hype.

The Plot (Spoiler-Free!)

If a hive of parasitic worms offered you solace and a home, would you accept?

Crane didn’t have anywhere to go and no one to turn to until the hive saved him. Now he’s indebted to them forever, with unblinding loyalty. The hive saved him. He owes them everything.

The hive understands him. It provides for him. It would never do something to hurt Crane.

Until it does.

The hive wants a baby, and Crane has been chosen to carry it to term. But he doesn’t want this. He never did. Unfortunately, it’s not about what Crane wants—it’s about what the hive wants.

What I Liked (Small Spoilers)

I’m really racking my brain here, but unfortunately I can’t think of much that I genuinely liked about this book. I do appreciate that, even though it was outside my typical genre, I stuck with it and saw it through.

If one of the goals of this book was to shed light on what some transgender and LGBTQ+ people experience, then I think it did a good job of that.

I was able to read about what it might feel like to be born in the wrong body, to live as someone you don’t feel you truly are, to fear your parents won’t understand, to worry about disappointing them, and to believe that leaving is easier than facing rejection. Instead, Crane turns to a different entity that seems to accept him exactly as he is, and all he has to do is remain loyal.

Who cares if it’s “scraps of clothing and chunks of hair, bones gnawed apart to scrape nutrients from the marrow, ossified calcium vomited into a wasp’s nest taking up the entire storage closet. The flies slept in clumps and the worms pulsed like neurons under a microscope, or what Crane imagined that might look like.”

At least they accept him.

Crane doesn’t feel like his life is worth much. So much so that he doesn’t even think he deserves to speak. He’s mute by choice.

However, as disturbing as it was, the one thing that actually made sense to me was him taking a bite out of his baby after giving birth. It was shocking to read, but then it made sense given his fascination with how some animals behave after giving birth.

What Didn’t Work for Me

To me, it seems like if I could sum up this book in one sentence, it’s about Crane desperately wanting to be accepted and loved by his parents.

I guess I just felt like the journey to get there was… a lot.

He often fantasizes about being raped. He likes being treated like filth sexually. He’s incredibly submissive and does whatever other people—or, in this case, other things—want him to do. He rarely makes decisions for himself.

I never actually felt traumatized or disturbed while reading this book. Strange things happened, sure, but none of them really stuck with me or left a lasting impression. Much of it came across as shock value without enough emotional depth behind it.

Final Thoughts

I’m not sure who this book is for, but it certainly wasn’t for me.

I don’t think my issues with You Weren’t Meant to Be Human had anything to do with it being outside my typical genre. Instead, I felt like many of the “disturbing” moments seemed forced and existed simply for the sake of being disturbing.

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend this book, and I don’t see myself picking up any other novels by Andrew Joseph White.