This was SO messed up, and so well-executed. I've read all of AJW's YA novels and I know how disturbing his stories can be, but this one, his adult debut, takes things to a whole new level of nauseating. You Weren't Meant to be Human explores bodily autonomy, reproductive abuse/forced pregnancy, self-destruction, loss of agency, and honestly, probably a lot more that I'm failing to name. There are a lot of content warnings in this book for good reason. If you have a womb, are trans, and/or neurodivergent, this will hit you even harder.

Quick summary: The MC, Crane, is trans, autistic, and non-verbal with a tendency toward self-harm and suicidal ideation. He's "saved" by The Hive, a cult led by a sentient mass of worms and flies that, yes, is as gross as you'd expect. The Hive loves Crane, and Crane feels validated for the first time in his life by the Hive. Then, Crane finds out he's pregnant. And The Hive wants him to keep it.

4.5 stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and S&S/Saga Press for the ARC!

I would have never thought this would be the first queer book I read for Pride Month but I’m truly glad I did. This was probably my favorite horror novel this year so far. We are introduced to Crane, a transman, who just so happens to be a member of an alien worm murder cult. I know, it’s a lot! Like the worms are literally an alien species that finds people and converts them to loyal subjects to play out the will of the Hive. I got so much from this novel! To start, it showed the horrific trauma of a person whose body is not theirs. Crane spent his entire life up until he joined the cult with extreme body dysmorphia! Can you imagine looking in the mirror everyday and seeing a stranger. Also dealing with transphobia and homophobia! Literally Crane’s “mate” Levi was a man that truly only used him and saw him as just wet vagina! Just horrible. I mean the level of transphobia in this country now in 2025 is outrageous, and in this book it shows the world how it would be if these current ideals have spiraled into the norm. At first I was thinking, how could a person be convinced to give up everything and serve an hidden alien race but when humanity has broken you down to your lowest any flicker seems like a light at the end of the tunnel. Then to speak on the damn aliens!!!!! What a horrible species. They only targeted the most vulnerable and broken. Very manipulative. The converts were going from one hell to the next! Like could you imagine having to present as female, having self unaliving thoughts due to it and then joining this cult, that “let’s you be who you are”, let’s you get on HRT, change your name and live as your true self only for the aliens to be plotting on you as a baby making machine to ensure their survival! Lordt this book was a lot but truly a good read.

3.5 stars

I chose to read this because it is set in West Virginia, but turns out it’s in exactly the stereotypical West Virginia area I hate to see portrayed (though Wash County is fictional, McDowell County is not.) The state has its problems, same as other places, but it’s a shame that I almost never see this beautiful, vibrant state portrayed in a good light.

But I digress. FTM trans Crane has run from his old life and is now voluntarily mute and living with his boyfriend in Wash County. Life is ugly, for him and his cohorts who all worship at the altar of a mass of flies and worms who may or may not be aliens and which form a hive in the back of a gas station. This hive has various outposts throughout the Appalachians and are serviced by a seedy band of society’s dropouts who don’t fit anywhere else.

There’s a lot happening here, but the upshot is that Crane gets pregnant and though he desperately wants to terminate the pregnancy the hive demands that he carry the child.

Oh, this is dark, dark, dark, but very well done, think Eric LaRocca. This world is an ugly, hopeless place, but I was impressed by White’s characterizations and his writing; I would definitely read more by this author…but be aware before starting the book that it isn’t for the squeamish, you’ll want to check the trigger warnings before you start. However, it’s not gross for the sake of shock value or anything, it serves a purpose in the story. So, while this wouldn’t normally be my type of book, suddenly, it is.

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.

First: You Weren’t Meant to be Human is extremely an adult book. The wildly inventive horror of Andrew Joseph White’s YA books is here, but it’s all grown up in this one and it’s seen some shit along the way.

This story is dark, claustrophobic, and terrifying in a very real way.

My thoughts are all over the place and maybe I should have waited to write a review until I could put them together a little better, but I kind of don’t want to. Let this be a review I don’t think about or plan ahead of time.

My brain is telling me to touch on my feelings about Levi, Jess, and Tammy. I have a lot of them. But my heart wants only to write about Crane, so I’m going to listen.

Crane is mute by choice. He has no voice whether he speaks or not. He feels he can’t speak for himself, he doesn’t know how to make his own decisions (which omg does this lead to one of the worst relationships I’ve ever read about). His feelings about himself and his intense self-hatred and the way he gave up everything so he could feel that he’s allowed to be a man are both beyond heartbreaking and intensely relatable.

The way he refers to his pre-transition self, Sophie, as a different person, is so real. Sophie isn’t Crane, she’s someone else. I loved the way this was done. It made so much sense to me. And when he became pregnant and was denied an abortion, Sophie was there taking over his body just as much as the baby was.

Crane’s pregnancy was exactly how I imagine being pregnant would be. His entire experience is awful. Worse than awful. The thing inside him doesn’t feel like a baby, a future person, but a parasite leaching off its host, sucking it dry until there’s nothing left. Knowing there’s a way to expel it but being forced to keep the parasite inside him sends him into a spiral that will haunt me for a very long time. I will never again be able to think about abortion rights without thinking of Crane.

Also, thanks to the hive, I will never look at a worm the same way again. Actually, fuck worms, tbh.

I wish I possessed an eloquent enough vocabulary to accurately describe how I feel about this book. It made me so sad, I cried so much. It was hard to read in the very best way. It’s a new favorite.

I couldn’t stop full on sobbing at the end, especially after reading the acknowledgments. My heart actually, physically, hurt. I am so grateful to Andrew Joseph White for sharing this deeply personal story with us.




***I will return with links to social media posts closer to the release date***

Never have I reacted so viscerally to a book before. There were so many times I found myself holding my breath.

Crane is a mute autistic trans man working for The Hive, a mass of alien worm-like creatures who he feels indebted to for allowing him to live as a man. But when he ends up pregnant The Hive demands he keep it, no matter what.

This book had me entranced. Disgusted, but entranced. 🤣 I loved certain characters and hated others (rightfully so). I never expected to love Stagger the way I did, but here we are. The last 10% or so of this was hard to digest. Even knowing the triggers going into this, I still found myself horrified and staring into the void when I was done. But, I loved it.

AJ White said this book was a response to the fall of Roe V. Wade. It shows. When you strip it down to the bare bones, the message it delivers is so impactful. Forcing an unwanted pregnancy is the true horror story here. This is one that's going to stick with me for a very long time.

Check those content warnings y'all.

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is fantastic, disgusting, vile, and unlike anything I’ve ever read. It’s a great book but not for the feign of the heart. There are moments that may make your stomach turn juxtaposed with the dread that comes with being queer in 2025. It’s all very metaphoric.

We follow Crane, a trans man, who is welcomed into the Hive, an accepting bunch of worms, flies and other insects, long as he follows their/its (?) orders, including stopping defectors and those that wish it harm. When Crane becomes pregnant by Levi, an ex-marine who mostly treats Crane like the man he’s always been, he’s met with an order he can’t follow: carry the pregnancy to term and bring it to the hive.

The opening chapters flew by, meeting other characters in Crane’s life, including Tammy, a mother figure, and Birdie and Aspen, friends from before the hive. These characters help flesh out (pun intended) this world that seems to love and hate us.

My only issue lies with the ending that ratchets up the action (nice) but doesn’t have much else to say… at least in my opinion. Thank you to NetGalley and Saga Press for the ARC.

Andrew Joseph White did an amazing job creating a truly disturbing story. Crane is such a sympathetic character and you root for him through his struggles inside the alien cult he's trapped in. The book is so visceral and raw. White truly captures the horrific aspects of pregnancy. He balances the grotesque with social commentary about abortion, pregnancy, healthcare, relationships, and the trans experience. This book is one that will sit with me for a long, long time.

3.5 stars

that ending was crazy, but so was the whole story leading up to that.

i wish we would’ve gotten more info about the hive and what it was exactly, also i would’ve preferred some other characters were mentioned in the ending as well.

thank you netgalley for the e-arc!

I don’t know where to start. There is a scene in the very early pages of the book that isn’t particularly graphic but has such emotional weight that I had to put the book down for a moment to remind myself to breathe. This novel is unapologetic and brutal, but it never for a moment feels exploitative or like it is pushing boundaries or being shocking just for the sake of it. As you get lost in this story you get the clear sensation that if there were any other way this story could be told, it would have been. This actually makes the story more visceral, more claustrophobic, more intimate. There is a truth here, and it is painful and dirty and violent and, yet, undeniable. Reading AJW’s young-adult novels forced me to reconsider what exactly “young-adult” means and contains, and here he defiantly displays that the horror and violence and dysregulation in those is, in fact, tame compared to the emotional devastation he is capable of.

I think AJW’s characters are great, as usual. The ancillary characters are all described and experienced from the perspective of the main character, and so none of them are as fleshed out as he is, but they still feel like genuine people. Given the story and the setting, they all make sense in this environment, and I can picture them and recognize them. The main character, Crane, is incredible. So much of his life is an enigma even to himself, but there is an emotional honesty to his character that is sometimes painful to witness. He is complicated and committed and I loved every broken part of him. Everything about this situation—the desperation, the loneliness, the isolation—they all add up to subtle but impressive world-building. What I think I appreciated the most is the lack of detail about the swarm, how they came to be and infiltrate people’s lives. There is a version of this story where you find out the swarm is a metaphor, the many buzzing faces of a crime syndicate that exploits the marginalized and downtrodden, and nothing about the story has to change. I like that. There is another version of this story where the swarm is actually just the status quo, the allure of a performative cishet-normativity that can convince us to act against our best interest in exchange for things feeling easier, at least on the surface. I choose to believe the literal description of this alien(?) swarm, but I am impressed by the ambiguity. Because the swarm is a disease, it feasts on our hopes and dreams, it infects us and offers chains and calls them mercies.

The writing in this novel feels deeply personal. It pulls the reader in and makes you complicit, holding a hand over your mouth not just to muffle your screams but because sometimes the world is easier to deal with when it starts to go grey around the edges. In all of that, there is a poetry to it, a sense of direction and a confidence in the prose that convinces the reader that this story is going exactly where it needs to, to its only possible outcome. The pacing is smart, building in intensity as the due date approaches, with a comfortable balance of action and silence. The story is so isolated and claustrophobic that there isn’t a lot of narrative action, but there is always a sense of movement, an inevitability, which highlights the uniquely internal journey that is the messy heart of the story. It didn’t end the way I expected it to, but as I turned the last page it was clear that it was exactly what it needed to be. I haven’t had such a confusing, competing set of simultaneous emotions in a while, and the juxtaposition of a gloomy cloud cover and a piercing, snow-blind brilliance was pitch perfect.

This story is about a lot of things. Knowing yourself, and your worth and value, is one of them. But being able to discover that and affirm it when it feels like the whole world is against you is another, and there is an uncompromising compassion for that struggle, too. Ideas of power and control, identity and presentation, protection and comfort, acceptance and support, these all have a role to play in this story. Yet nothing about this story feels like it is force-feeding you anything, nor lecturing nor sermonizing. There is an unflinching dignity that underlies this story, and for all of the themes or ideas it is playing with it ultimately stands on its own as representing nothing but itself. It might turn your stomach, but it won’t let you look away.

I want to thank the author, the publisher Saga Press, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

I didn’t like the representation of the autistic character. I liked the dark fantasy appeal to the plot. The Hive for me was seen as a controlling part of the story, the worms were much more the story than the hosts. I was getting The kid who ate fried worms turned into horror story. It was dark, compelling, funny and mysterious.

You Weren't Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White
Huge thank you to@sagapressbooks @ajwhiteauthor, and @netgalley for allowing me to read this one before its release date on September 29, 2025.

Okay, this book is wild. It's horrific in the most incredible way. Definitely check out the trigger list as it can be quite difficult to read.

Not only is it a horror story in the sense that alien worms have taken over. But we also see the very real horror of a trans man being denied access to an abortion he very much wants.

Our main character deals with significant trauma. While he discusses some of it, we're definitely left in the dark for the majority of it. I would have loved to have more information regarding some of these details, but I also feel like that's part of what makes the story so intriguing.

I would also love to pick the authors brain because the ending was absolutely wild. Did not see it coming. Mind blown.

This novel was a gut-punch in the best way. With vivid and, a good chunk of the time, grotesque writing, I found myself either reading the book or thinking about reading the book when I couldn’t.

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human follows Crane, an autistic trans man who prefers never speaking, as he is forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term by the worms he gave himself to when he was 18 and suicidal.

At no point could I guess what was going to happen next, and I loved every second of it. I’ll admit I didn’t love every second of living in Crane’s head, but his narration was amazing. I felt everything he felt, I had the same visceral reactions to things that he did, all of the things that a great narration makes you experience. I even found myself fond of Jess and Stagger, who were fellow worm victims at their core.

The relationships throughout the novel were so complex, and I could never parse them out fully (which I LOVED). I never knew where a character stood with Crane or where Crane stood with said character. It kept me on my toes for every interaction.

I wish I knew more about the worms’ origin but it was also so integral to the story for them to be a creepy, wriggling mass that you don’t understand fully. I’ll be thinking about this book and the characters for the foreseeable future.

Absolutely amazing book, I’m so honored and grateful to read it. Thank you to Saga Press Books and Andrew Joseph White for the e-ARC!

I really wanted to like You Weren’t Meant to Be Human because the concept sounded so unique, and I’ve heard good things about Andrew Joseph White’s other books. But this one just didn’t work for me. The story was confusing at times, and the writing felt heavy and hard to follow. There were a lot of intense and graphic scenes that felt more shocking than meaningful, and it was hard to stay connected to the main character or the plot.
I get that the book was trying to explore deep topics about identity and control, but it didn’t come together in a way that made me care. It had some interesting ideas, but overall it was too much, and not in a good way.

The premise of this book sounded incredibly promising, but unfortunately, it fell flat for me. While I genuinely disliked the story, I also recognize that I may not be the intended audience.

I didn’t connect with any of the characters—not a dealbreaker for me normally—but in this case, they felt one-dimensional and often made choices that seemed driven purely by the needs of the plot rather than any internal logic or development. The world-building, particularly around the worms and flies, was lacking. Readers are expected to take it all at face value without much explanation or depth.

One aspect I truly appreciated was the trans representation, which was handled well and stands out as the book’s most redeeming quality.

Given such a unique and intriguing concept, I was hoping for a more compelling execution. The story flirted with wild, unsettling elements but never fully committed—except for one memorable scene near the end.

as a huge fan of aj white, this must be up there with THE SPIRIT BARES ITS TEETH for me. everything about this is just...phenomenal & weird. but so, so fucking touching. as a non-binary person who fears pregnancy to the life of me, there wasn't one singular passage about the threat of crane's pregnancy, his fears, and his sorrows that didn't touch something raw inside of me too.

it made the damn worms & the body horror that accompanies it look like a fucking cake walk.

i'm goddamn speechless. phenomenal.

Please make sure to check all the content warnings that I list on my Storygraph. This book is graphic and explicit and touches on many topics and themes that are not meant to be read easily.

A deeply grim, depressing and tragic read from start to finish. Andrew Joseph White’s first try at an adult horror and I feel like that it works in so many ways. Unlike his YA books that often present a light, sometimes dimmer than others, for the readers to search, this book doesn’t provide that. And it’s intentional and it’s painful and it’s masterful.

We are presented with a deeply flawed and struggling character in our Crane, our protagonist. A character who is so far from perfect but so real and someone who is trying to survive. And survival isn’t perfect, it isn’t beautiful. It isn’t tied up with a little ribbon and presented to you. The rest of the cast are well written and boy, do I have a lot of emotions and feelings towards Levi in particular.

The ending was equally as grim and painful as the rest of the book. I understand that being the intention and it's very reminiscent of the way Hereditary and Midsommer were meant to make you feel. This ache that drops from your chest to your stomach knowing that maybe things will get better, but knowing that we won't see it happen and knowing that the road to "better" is still a long ways away. I think this will work for many readers, but as someone who isn't a fan of either movie mentioned above, it left me just feeling depressed.

I do however plan to sit on the ending a bit longer and give it time to process, and maybe this rating will go up to 5. But for now, despite having be enthralled y 96% of the story, the last bit left me wanting more catharsis.

I’m giving this book five stars because I believe it accomplishes what it set out to do. I can’t truthfully say that I enjoyed it per se, but I don’t think it’s the kind of book that is meant to be enjoyable. It is well written and vividly conveys Crane’s feelings toward his unwanted pregnancy as a trans man, and it felt meaningful to have an autistic and trans main character. If I have any complaint, it’s that the overall tone of the story is so incredibly bleak that I found it difficult to get emotionally invested in any of the characters, but again, I believe this is more or less what was intended, and I don’t consider it a fault of the book or the author, just my own personal threshold for this sort of thing.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

I've read all three of AJW's young adult novels, and I adored them all for different reasons. I was stoked to read this book because the concept of pregnancy and childbirth as body horror is FASCINATING to me. One of the main reasons why I choose to remain childfree is because I am terrified of being pregnant. The idea of my body growing a human and then pushing it out scares the shit out of me. Needless to say, I was very excited to read this.

I'm hesitant to really give it a review because this story feels so personal to the author, and I hate having to ascribe a star rating to it. It made my skin crawl, my stomach turn, and I found myself saying MAKE IT STOP a few times, particularly at the end (and I mean this in the best way). I do wish that we learned more about the origins of the Hive. The West Virginia hive is the one Crane and co. are part of, and the Tennessee Hive gets mentioned, but are there other regions/states outside of Appalachia that have them? Did they start springing up after certain Supreme Court decisions that the book alludes to? I wanted to know every little thing about the Hive, and I feel like I need to steel myself to read the book again because there are definitely things I missed.

All in all, this book is gross and harrowing and cathartic, and it may shock you. It didn't resonate with me as much as the author's YA novels, but that's okay. I'm still really glad I got the chance to read it.

(Finally - I strongly recommend that every person who reads this book, even if they're a horror fan, to read the trigger warnings. Believe me, you will want to be prepared for what's within these pages).

This was raw, visceral, disgusting, and so so good.
But also a LOT.

Content warnings include: violence, murder, gore, questionable consent and rape, graphic birth, stillbirth and abortion, suicidal ideation, transphobia, ableism, mutilation of corpses, infanticide, cannibalism, self-harm and self-mutilation, intrusive thoughts; Mentions of: bestiality, imprisonment.
There are general warnings at the beginning of the book, and more details/context to the warnings have been posted by the author .

While the book is described as pregnancy horror during an alien invasion, and that is technically correct, at its core it is a story about abuse. All forms of it: domestic, self-inflicted, sexual, as well as within a community in a culture of manipulation.

The whole alien invasion aspect was very secondary. It could have easily been switched out with a "normal" (as in, human) cult, with very few changes. I still loved all the alien stuff, as it added an extra element that was both disgusting as well as mysterious. I wish there had been a bit more details/world-building around the aliens and their purpose, but the story is focussed on Crane and his perspective and story, and to Crane, the aliens' purpose on earth is not important at all.

Crane is a great protagonist. He is autistic and choses not to talk, and I really enjoyed reading about how he communicates with the people around him without ever speaking a single word. I'm not sure I really read about a character like that before, at least not as a book's protagonist.

Crane is intensely self-destructive. He is clearly struggling with mental health issues, idealizes suicide and self-mutilation, has constant intrusive thoughts and sexual fantasies that disgust him as much as they arouse him. Being in his mind and reading about his thoughts can be shocking, but I also found him to be intensely relateable. The intersection of neurodivergency, mental health and being trans is one I experience as well, and even if the details are different for me, the root causes of why he has these specific struggles and thoughts... yeah, I feel that.

In the afterword, the author talks about how personal a lot about Crane is to him, and I definitely felt that while reading. It adds a vulnerable quality to the book that, despite or maybe because of it's rawness, really made me connect to it.

I loved so much about this book and devoured it in a very short time, and whenever I wasn't reading, I was thinking about it. And after I finished, fuck, I didn't know what to do with myself for a long time, and I think I am still processing a lot of it.

The ending was both satisfying and shocking. A lot of what I was anticipating and hoping to happen came true, but there were also some curveballs, some of them so severe that my head is still spinning.
I do like where the story ends, and I think it's a well chosen point to end it. But it's also just open enough to give me so much anxiety about what might happen beyond that point, with some details that did not quite wrap up neatly enough that I am struggling with letting go. While that sucks for me personally, as it feels like a fist in my stomach that I cannot get rid of, that arguably is the most successful ending a horror book can achieve.

Overall this is a stunning, shocking horror story about abuse, focussing on pregnancy horror through an trans and autistic lense, with a cool alien backdrop and a visceral writing style that is, frankly, off-putting at times. I could not put it down, and if you can stomach the content warnings, I highly recommend this!

This story was both disturbing and visceral, which I think made for an engaging horror novel. It had a well-thought out story that kept me in suspense of how it would end and strong, three-dimensional characters who felt alive, and I even strongly hated a few of them! I couldn't stop reading and devoured it in only a few days.