Over the weekend in the swimming pool, as a robot skimmer swept past me removing insects and small leaves from the surface of the water and we listened to music beamed wirelessly from my phone to a portable, voice-controllable, waterproof speaker across the patio, I was struck by the idea that we are very much living in the "future". We may not have all of the inventions imagined by science fiction writers over the years (still no flying cars or teleportation), but when you stop to think about it, we do have more of them than we might have expected to even a decade or two ago. And while that revelation can be somewhat awe-inspiring, when one considers the pace of change and the myriad negatives that same technology has had on our society it can also be more than a little frightening. Helen Phillips manages to perfectly capture those conflicting emotions in her short but stunning latest, Hum.

May recently lost her job developing the communicative abilities of AI when the hums (human-like robots) became smart enough to handle the task on their own. Now relying on her husband Jem's TaskRabbit-like gig work to support their small family, they are falling behind on bills while May continues in vain to find employment. Daughter Lu and son Sy are both addicted to the Bunny devices they keep strapped to their wrists, which also allow their parents to monitor their location and vitals, and to their Wooms, cocoon-like spaces they can hide in and browse the internet, while Jem relentlessly checks his phone, keeping an eye on his abnormally high customer rating.

May longs for more human connection with her family, recalling what it was like growing up before an unnamed ecological disaster struck, decimating the planet's natural resources, but she finds her husband and children either unwilling or unable to participate. She enrolls in a trial program for a new cosmetic procedure that promises to subtly alter a person's face enough to avoid identification by the surveillance systems in place around the city in exchange for enough money to sustain the family for several more months, and then immediately decides to spend a large chunk of her payout on a vacation to the Botanical Gardens, a walled off site amidst the city's industrial sprawl that features lush forests, fresh fruit, and wild creatures seldom seen anymore. When she informs them of her purchase, Jem is initially worried over the expense, but the kids are beyond excited, and since her discounted rate requires them to enter the next day, they pack their things, get some sleep, and head to the park, but (at May's insistence) without all of their devices.

While May is initially blissful in the Botanical Garden, on the second day she and Jem become separated from Lu and Sy. Detached from their technology, the hums that man the park are heavily limited in their ability to help and May begins to search frantically for them on her own as she finds herself second-guessing all of her decisions and desires. In an increasingly tech-obsessed world all she wanted was an authentic experience with her loved ones, but in so doing has she failed at her job to keep her children safe?

The near-future world that Phillips has created here is well-imagined and frighteningly plausible, perhaps because of how strikingly similar it is to today. Anyone who has ever wondered at and worried over the breakneck rate of technological advancement we are currently living through will feel an immediate kinship with May. But many of the fears she experiences are relevant in any time and will ring true to any parent, succinctly summed up by a hum who assesses her by saying, "You feel disoriented, May. You are unsure how to be in the world as it is now. You know the world is damaged, but you don't know what that means for the lives of your children. You want to prepare them for the future, but you are scared to picture the future. You are seeking inside yourself the scrappiness, the courage, that will power the rest of your life."

May lives in a world where everything is available almost instantly with a simple voice command. Where technology is cheap as long as you're willing to put up with relentless targeted advertising. Where the planet is dying and jobs are disappearing and people communicate with each other via AI-generated text messages, if at all. This is alarmingly close to today by design, and it will have you questioning your own relationship to technology. Whether Hum actually inspires you to make any changes is up to you, but it's a thoughtfully written and deeply engaging story that proves hard to put down. It's one of my favorite reads this year and it will certainly get readers talking. Or at least checking to see if their hands look "old."

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

This book took me by surprise. While I did find it hard to connect with May as a character, the writing was very beautiful. It began with a very real fear that many have, an A.I. taking over her job leaving her family with little to no money. After undergoing an experimental procedure to camouflage her face from facial recognition with some sort of tattoo, she receives a large sum of money in return. Rather than saving the money or paying off debts, she decides to pay for a family vacation to the city to the Botanical Garden, which is an environmental sanctuary with trees, clean water, and animals that can't be found elsewhere due to extreme climate change.

This book is less plot based and more introspective, tackling a few common issues. Normally, I would not gravitate towards something with such little actual plot, but Phillips writing is so good that I didn't find myself losing interest as I tend to with this kind of sci-fi. Hum discusses technology, climate change, money and family issues, and the desperation that many people feel when they don't have money for even basic necessities. The technology, in this case, was more of the focus, with Hums being the central AI that people encounter everyday. These reminded me of the Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits", where the entertainment and service bots and technology will intermittently advertise to you. You can pay to skip the targeted advertisements. Hum was one of those sci-fi books that makes you question things, which is a huge reason that I'm drawn to the sci-fi genre in general. I highly recommend this book.

HUM is a tautly written, stark work of speculative fiction that takes many things already present in our modern society to a new level. It is thought-provoking and often disturbing, especially after reading the real-life headlines found in the expansive Endnotes. 😳⁣
⁣
The deceptively simple plot revolves around a vacation taken by May and her family at the luxurious and verdant Botanical Garden. She has undergone a surgical procedure to render her face undetectable to the omnipresent AI cameras, and because of that is able to afford the brief 3-day stay with her family. May was terminated from her job working in AI because she had become obsolete; the network had learned to teach itself. Her husband Jem works gigs based on a Task Rabbit-like app and so the family’s financial situation is precarious. ⁣
⁣
The title refers to the “Hums”, silvery-metallic looking humanoid robots which have now replaced humans in many situations. They work in doctor’s offices and deliver food orders, among other tasks. May’s children are also tethered to the internet via their “bunnies” which seem to be Apple-like watches that can track their movements, heart rates and locations. 🤖

The author doesn’t judge our reliance on the internet or our mindless and endless consumption. She instead imagines what might become of us and our planet if we keep on this path. ⁣This novel reminded me of the series ⁣𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘔𝘪𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘳, which I loved. It is both unsettling and unnerving. If you’re a fan of speculative fiction, I recommend this one. ⁣
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Thank you @_simonelement and @marysueruccibooks for the opportunity to read an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

SciFi from a woman's PoV by an actual woman is not as rare a thing as it once was. Even women SF writers of the comparatively recent past wrote a boy's or man's PoV as often as not. Now this ignoring of The Future (as seen by women in it) is passé. We still don't see a ton of mothers as PoV characters, though.

May is such a PoV character, and she resonates powerfully with me. Her steely determination to provide for her family is the bedrock of the story. The worldbuilding is subtle, as one would expect from an author working in the (very) near future. Probably my single favorite touch of worldbuilding is one I think is largely invisible to most: May, our main charater, is married to Jem; their children are Sy and Lu.

Even their names are minimized. That most human of sounds, our names, is clipped down to the minimum of syllables, squeezing these beings into a narrower, and narrowing, bandwidth. One better suited, not coincidentally, to the vocal apparatus of the "hums" of the title.

Ah, the hums...the titular beings who represent the next (?) generation of the smartphones now falling out of favor among the young (to me) user base. If, as I suspect, their increasing disenchantment with these devices is being quietly steered, I suspect the course they're being steered ON is the one Author Phillips is showing us in this story.

The worst nightmare of a parent is to lose their children. Especially very young ones whose understanding of the World around them is unformed. Why else did the Satanic Panic/Stranger Danger epidemic get rolling? Losing a child to death by disease is less and less common...thank all those useless gods for that...but accidents, and malicious actions like addictions, malefactors who prey on the innocent are still there to obsess the fretful. Now add AI to that mix, and Author Phillips is on a winner to speak to this seething mass market. She does not do this cynically. Her brushes against the eerieness of the surveillance capitalism around us border on entry into the Uncanny Valley. Her own previous writing has been used without permission or compensation to train the generative AI we're being told will take over. I myownself think, however, that Sabine Hossenfelder's got the right handle on the reality of the eventual results. Author Phillips is wise to point to the ways this borning system is likely to fail Humanity, to the humans who still have time to change course.

<I>Hum</I> traverses nightmarish loss, dystopian social catastrophe, and failures of a deeply human sort in this tale. I wish I could pooh-pooh its premise, or its cconclusions, but I can't. I think all y'all who read my reviews will know what you need to know about my opinion of the read by the fact that a) I published a review on a Tuesday, 2) I was apprived for this DRC on 2 August and am reviewing it four days later, and iii) have not said, and do not intend to say, one critical word about its conception or execution.

Many of y'all do not like anything SFnal or speculative. I encourage those folk most especially to get this from the library and read it.

You're going to live it soon enough.
<B>NB <I>there are links to sources and definitions in the blogged review</I></b>

I really loved THE NEED, so I was thrilled to get an advanced copy of Helen Phillips’ newest novel, HUM — available today.

Hum is a dystopian novel that takes plaice in the future where technology is further advanced than it is today. Picture this: Children have electronic “bunnies” attached to their wrists; people sleep in Wooms, small pods surrounded in screens that can show you nature of the past or make you feel like you are in a womb. Nature is gone and the city as taken over; air quality is poor. A “Hum” is a robot that acts like a person but also is an advertising vehicle. The economy is terrible.

Hum tells the story of May, a mother of two who loses her job training AI. Her husband, Jem, is a gig worker (mostly cleaning mouse traps). To raise funds for her family, May decides to undergo an experimental procedure where her face is altered so she can no longer be identified by Face ID.

She splurges on a vacation for the family — basically to a forrest filled with nature that her children have never seen before. Something happens there that changes the family’s life….

Pick this one up if you like dystopian novels that feel a little too possible. The world that Phillips created was eerie because it didn’t seem too far fetched with the way technology is progressing.

HUM by Helen Phillips ~to be published August 6, 2024

Thank you to @marysueruccibooks and @simonandschuster for the gifted advance reader copy. I absolutely loved this book and it will undoubtedly be a favorite of the year! This is truly speculative fiction at its finest.

Set in the near future, yet so incredibly relatable, Philips has written an urgent and necessary story. May’s life is fraying at the edges. Artificial intelligence has replaced her at work, she is deeply in debt but continues to spend, and she fears she is losing her connection with her husband and young children. Phillips explores so many weighty and relevant topics – from surveillance, AI, and our addiction to our devices, to climate change and consumerism – with such humor and heart.

No other book I’ve read this year has resonated with me as much as this one in its exploration of both motherhood and selfhood. I highly recommended this to all!

Hum was a compelling and propulsive read and May a relatable character who is trying hard, but makes her difficulties worse. I read this book rapidly in order to find out what happened next to this family, and also because the apocalyptic world they lived in seemed almost familiar - just a few steps ahead of where ours is now.

I felt this book was well crafted and Phillips deftly wove several social and relational threads together.

I completely enjoyed reading Hum.

May Webb lives in a major city with her husband and two children at an unspecified time in the (presumably) not too distant future. Climate change is rampant, AI is everywhere, and adults and children alike are completely tech connected. When May is laid off, she makes ends meet by allowing a tech company to subtly alter her face in order to test facial recognition software. She uses a large chunk of the money to take her family on a visit to the Botanical Gardens, the green space in the middle of the city generally reserved for the wealthy. A series of small choices sets off a string of events in which everything May cares for is threatened.

I have extremely mixed feelings about this book. It was a quick, propulsive read that I finished in a few days. There were moments that felt so true to life - I felt May’s stress when she overspent on an experience for her kids, then stressed out when every moment wasn’t perfect; I love how “safe” it feels like I can locate my kids through their tech but then I worry that without it they won’t be able to weather the regular hiccups of daily life.

Ultimately, though, for a 267-page book Phillips just spread herself too thin; she touched on climate change, technology, facial recognition, the divide between the rich and poor, and changing family dynamics due to technology but never had the time to really get into depth on any of them. Things moved so quickly that there wasn’t enough time to build the characters as thoroughly and nuanced as she seemed capable of.

To be completely fair, though, I am not a huge fan of sci-fi or speculative fiction, so if that is your preferred genre I would still recommend this book as it was a quick and exciting read.

4 ⭐️. love me a dystopian, sci-fi light read. while I really enjoyed this story, I do feel like it needed fledged out more. It felt like each section was going off in a different direction and didn't feel entirely meshed together as a cohesive story. SPOILER: it also just.....ended? out of nowhere. I felt very unfulfilled.


ty to Simon Element & NetGalley for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

I’m confused. We are literally thrown into this world full of AI machines called “Hums” where our main character is getting some experimental procedure done to make her face unrecognizable to all of the machines running this dystopian world. Apparently she also created these machines and then they took her job? Anyway, she’s getting paid a lot of money to do this procedure and her and her family desperately need that money.

She’s also having marital problems and she reallllly wants her husband to f*** her (the sex scenes in this book were so…weird). So, she spends a chunk of the money she just made to let a robot disfigure her face (but to what extent I’m never really sure because some people treat her like she’s grotesque while others are like not bothered by her appearance) to bring her family on a vacation to the Botanical Gardens (because apparently there’s no wildlife or nature in this world), and she ends up seeking help from a Hum to find her kids while she’s in distress.

The synopsis makes you this will be some epic story because her “kids come under threat” but it was so anticlimactic???? There’s so much that this book doesn’t explain and since family drama is such a big component some background info would have been nice. Anyway, by the end I was just left beyond underwhelmed. Maybe I’m just dumb and didn’t read the context clues or look at the bigger picture, but even though this ARC was gifted to me I really don’t have many positives to state except that this had major potential and I thought this was going to be so much more than it was. The writing was clunky, it lacked important details, the plot fell extremely flat, and I am left completely and utterly confused.

Thank you Atria/Marysue Rucci books for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

May needs money a signs up for an experimental procedure to alter her face so she cannot be recognized on surveillance. Her world is a world of intelligent robots and AI. With her new money she takes her family on a trip to a Garden, to see forests, streams, and animals but it is not the relaxing restoration she expected.

This was a fast paced read, especially for science fiction. Sci fi is not a favorite of mine, as it’s often complicated and too detailed for me. This story was very easy to understand. I loved the look at a possible future. Most importantly, I loved the look at motherhood in a possible future and the insecurities we always have.

“… if others were steeped in the context of your life, as I am, they would feel compassion for you, as I do.”

Hum comes out 8/6.

Thanks, I hated it.

Very beautiful capture of the anxiety of raising children in a surveillance and consumerism based state, unsettlingly accurate. The entire story was exquisitely tense, claustrophobic, and hit way too close to home. I loved it, but was legitimately stressed out about how familiar everything felt, and I don't even have kids. Phillips has an incredible atmospheric style- describing specific sensations or details of scenes set the whole vibe so well.

I kind of wish this was shorter, or longer, there were some pacing points that felt a little off, either too quick or took a long time to build up.

Four stars because the ending had me so confused and lost that I re-read it three times and still don't really understand the resolution. I also very much wanted a comeuppance and the end upheld the very realistic helplessness we would all have in the same situation.

This is a great story for people who distrust AI, or maybe should be.

As with The Need, Phillips' writing is easily devoured and requires thorough digestion. The story is set in the not too distant future where climate change has created hazardous living conditions and interactions with robots called Hums have become a significant part of daily life. But the growing capabilities of AI have left many, like May obsolete in the workplace. Philips writing is very direct in the way it draws the reader into this world, and refreshing in the way she trusts the reader to understand the structure of the is society and the science fiction elements without excessive world building.

At several points, the story left me feeling unsettled and on the edge of my seat waiting for something bad to happen, which is exactly how Philips portrays May throughout the book. The way we see May's anxieties and desires come off as very realistic and perhaps transcend time and circumstance because in spite of the futuristic setting, her anxieties are still around the safety and hippieness of her children and financial security.

While Philips highlights the pitfalls of AI and dependence on technology, the reality this story depicts is that our relationship with technology is complex. Even throughout the novel, May's own stance remains undecided. She wants to take her family on a tech free vacation to engage with nature, and each other without the distraction, but finds herself desperate to return to it when her children are missing, and once again desperate to escape when she goes viral as a bad parent. What stands out in the novel is the way Philips draws attention to the Hums 'learning' and the ways the humans willingly participate in this process in both implicit and explicit ways. Before she lost her job, May was responsible for building up the communication abilities for AI, and to keep her family financially stable, she opted to have her face altered as part of a study that would make her face unreadable by the existing AI metrics, but is still meant to teach the system how to read her new face. Even through the distrust May feels towards the Hum throughout the end of the book, the story is heartwarming as the Hum shows May all of the things her and her family have taught it, not just from a scientific or marketing perspective as it's generally designed to do, but about the nuances of motherhood, family and herself.


I would recommend this book to readers who also enjoyed A School For Good Mothers

Near-ish future, gray concrete dystopian world where robot “hums” have taken all of the jobs, leaving the MC, May, desperate enough to undergo an experimental face-altering surgery to make some cash. She blows a big chunk of said cash on a three-day family trip to the Botanic Garden, a luxury nature resort where she hopes to reconnect with her husband and kids without their devices. Then some stuff goes wrong and May needs help from a hum.

I liked this well enough for maybe the first fifty pages or so and felt some real empathy for May and her (relatable) fears and anxieties about AI, consumerism, plastic being everywhere, the struggles of marriage and kids, but that wasn’t enough to keep the story interesting.

My main issue was that the “children coming under threat” plot was not what I expected as described in the blurb - I was expecting an apocalyptic meltdown/robot rebellion/wild animals on a rampage/viral outbreak/SOMETHING EXCITING happening within the walls of the Garden, not the boring, slow, sad business that did occur.

Also:

I couldn’t stand reading the word “woom” (maybe I’m overly sensitive bc of the Zillow Gone Wild show promos with the guy asking Kenneth “do you want to see my woom?” which is a little womb-like space (GET IT??!!??) carved into the rock walls of his house which I guess is supposed to be cute/clever but it just sounds like baby talk which makes me insane) ANYWAY blargh.

The kids were THE WORST. The younger one’s nonstop, nonsensical yammering was relentless and there was WAAAAY too much of it for such a supposedly “taut, urgent” book.

I did think the hums breaking into ads was hilarious and felt uncomfortably real.

Why are the kids’ wrist things called bunnies?

This has a lot of good reviews, but it didn’t work for me at all.

This felt a little too real

MY THOUGHTS💭: I have to be honest—I really enjoyed this book! Where some reads are very subtle in their approach and it doesn’t work, the subtlety in this book makes it even more searing and leaves you with so much to think about after you close it. "Hum" sets the scene of an eerie future that feels closer than I would like to admit. A future in which every activity comes with an ad, robots called Hums take care of your every need, and toxic air is normal, while green grass, clean water, and human experiences come at a cost.

We fall into the lives of May and Jem, two parents doing whatever it takes to get by. At the book's start, we see May willing to undergo a minor facial transformation as part of a scientific study in hopes of utilizing the money she’ll receive. Put into this position after years of working to better AI, her job has now become obsolete and rendered useless while her husband takes on gig work. Sound familiar? Wanting to provide her family with a luxury experience, May uses some of the money from her procedure to take her kids and husband to the botanical gardens—a lush and vibrant green space where those who can afford it can escape the daily effects of a world destroying itself.

Once there, away from the constant buzz of technology (a choice made by May to experience this vacation without phones or watchful devices), the family starts to take in the natural oasis that is the botanical gardens. It’s here that we start to delve into the dangerous and codependent relationships that exist between technology and human experience. This book is creepy in the way it reminds you how much of this is already occurring in real life—the way not only children, but even adults, rely heavily on technology for day-to-day living and just how close we are to sacrificing the very human things about us for another opportunity to buy, shop, and purchase.

The book’s tone mimics the sterile and direct format of the Hum devices, only mirroring enough warmth to comfort you. Some people might read this book and feel like they’re just following along with the family and their day-to-day experiences, but it’s all the instances that push this book further and make it one worth talking about. It’s the kids who are quick to tell a device they love it before their own parents. It’s the way everything is for sale, even your own identity. It’s the desperation to afford a better life. The dark reality of losing control to the systems you’ve created.

While I found some things annoying or frustrating about this book, I also felt they were extremely intentional. One being May’s kids, Lu and Sky, who at many times are written to be annoying, ungrateful, secretive, and disruptive. Though we already see this today—kids who will throw a tantrum if they don’t get their tablet back, spend more time on devices than they do outside, to the point where going to what is essentially a greenhouse theme park feels like a luxury experience. Or May and her husband Jem’s relationship, which doesn’t necessarily feel strained but instead distant. Once again, shining a light on the individualistic tendencies of technology—how two people can find warmth, safety, and comfort in a device before each other and how human interaction can begin to feel like a chore.

Overall, I found this book intriguing and couldn’t put it down. From the way it examines capitalism, AI, the progression of technology, and even motherhood. I don’t think this book was meant to dive deep into how we get to this point, but instead shine a light on how we’re almost there. Phillips’ characters are reflections—I didn’t feel like I needed to know much of their backstory because I feel like I know these people in real life. Parents willing to do anything to make their kids happy, families struggling to get by, and a system that requires you to comply rather than succeed.

I was hooked in from the start with this thought-provoking read. It had me examining our addiction vs. need for technology, the impact of constant advertising on our psyche and our wallet, expectations of mothers vs. fathers and the results of climate change. That's a lot of huge topics all wrapped into 272 pages, but I was here for it completely. When finished, I was confused by the resolution and found myself re-reading passages to attempt to "solve" the story, but in retrospect I think the author wanted conclusions to be made by the individual, which was great. I could see many college papers being written about this novel.

After making it half-way through, I organized a meeting with my defunct bookclub for September based solely on this book because I think the discussion will be so rich, especially since we are all mothers of elementary-school children.

🎬 Read this if you like:
Bird Box
WALL-E
⏰ Best time to read:
Around Mothers Day, or after a stroll through the park
📝 Themes:
Literary Fiction, Dystopian Sci-Fi, Motherhood, Climate Change, Consumerism, Social Media, Artificial Intelligence, Gig Economy
👍 What I liked:
The combination of literary fiction and dystopian sci-fi means Hum is right up my alley. Helen Phillips is also an amazing writer, and Hum was written with a very tender touch.
❓ Synopsis: Hum follows May, who is the mother of Lu and Sy, and the wife of Jem. Her family is struggling as a result of the gig economy and worker robots (called hums), both of which are limiting opportunities for human workers. To supplement her family's income, May undergoes facial un-recognition surgery as part of a paid experiment. Then, after splurging on a family vacation, a series of events push May to a breaking point and threaten to separate May from her family.
📣 Review: Hum is ultimately a story of motherhood, and ways in which technology and the existential crises of the present make raising and protecting children different, and maybe more difficult. I loved the character-building in Hum, the poignancy of the dystopian world in which the book is set (can robots be more empathetic than humans?), and the writing style (which will be appreciated by all lit fic fans).

Thank you for the ARC. This book was really interesting. I flew through it. I liked the commentary about advertisement, waste, and parenting. I didn’t really understand the ending though.

This was a quick read but made me think a lot about how technology is invading every moment of our lives, or at least working towards that. To go anywhere without a cellphone is just not done anymore because they hold all the important info. Hum brings this point home to the extreme, with even little kids strapping "bunnies" to their wrists that tracks them and listens and entertains the kids, especially when they are in their wooms.

I could really understand May, who came into a bit of money after agreeing to the face distortion surgery, trying to give her kids the experience she had growing up where there was still trees and good outside. That part felt nicely nostalgic but also sad because the good outdoors is only found in certain shielded areas.

But even that paradise had hidden dangers and was only a facade, and after when the experience went viral and May was bombarded with all that hate, I could see that being so true, even more than it is now. That was a scary thought.

So, this was an interesting read though a bit uncomfortable because of how likely it could happen for real. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me a chance to read and review this book.

Helen Phillips’s Hum is one of those books that crawls into the deepest parts of my brain—the niggling thoughts and fears that surface most often in the middle of the night—and just won’t leave. It’s speculative fiction set in the very near future, a novel that unearths the ugly threat of our pathways and habits.

The setting is a city devastated by the climate crisis. May and her family—her husband Jem and children Lu and Sy—have struggled to survive on his gig work since May lost her tech job to hums, robots driven by the very AI she’d been training. Out of desperation, May signs up for adversarial tech surgery. These small modifications to her face will prevent her from being recognized by the technology that runs her city.

The large payment she gets in exchange is meant to go to practical costs like rent and medical bills, and May does take care of some of those. But in a spontaneous (but not really) move, she also buys nonrefundable tickets for a family weekend at the Botanical Garden, the only place where they can access the type of nature that is now lost, the type of nature that surrounded May while she was growing up.

Despite Jem’s misgivings, the family embarks on this trip within the city, with May determined to make the weekend a perfect oasis within the gritty darkness of their lives.

This world is one where adults are always on their phones; where children’s lives are tracked and fueled by “bunnies,” wearable wrist technology; and where people spend much of their time within Wooms, immersive isolation pods in which occupants are completely surrounded by screens. But May wants to break these connections, insisting that they leave their phones and bunnies behind.

Hum isn’t a comfortable book; there’s too much that’s recognizable, and I often felt deeply seen (and not in a good way), and every page of the book is thought provoking. But. It’s when May’s children go missing in the midst of the Botanical Garden, untrackable (no bunnies!), that the story really ramps up . . . as did my anxiety . . . even (especially!) when a Hum steps into help.

Phillips, the author of The Need (another amazing book), is juggling so much here: Hum features deeply drawn characters and an incredibly compulsive plot alongside resonant questions about the path we’re all on and where it may be leading. I couldn’t look away, from the book or from what it reflected back at me. This will be one of my top books of the year.