I LOVE this book! The story completely enveloped my imagination and transported me to it's world, and I was anxious for the mother the whole way through. You're never sure what the Hum's intentions are, the entire way through, which grips your brain the entire journey of this story.
All of the characters in the story feel so real and that really helps you stay with the story.
The writing has a really nice flow. The story is creative and unique, while playing on an older theme on our future with AI and robots.

Thank you for letting me read this early. It was a treasure. I'll definitely want a copy of this one.
Recommend!

While I think this did a wonderful job providing a specific sense of dystopian unease, I left wondering if this story ever took a real stance on anything. Yes, it did explore our attitude towards mothers in this social climate, and capitalism/our constant state of being advertised to. But the chapters were so brief, that whenever I started to get any deeper sense of meaning, the chapter was over and we were moving on from there. The parts that alluded to our constant state of uncontrollable, shameful purchasing combined with unceasing advertisements were my favorite. With that said, I read this in one sitting, and the sense of anxiety is palpable through this, you cannot help but continue turning the pages and find out what happened.

Thank you to S&S and Marysue Rucci Books for a copy of an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Got half way through this one and couldn't finish it. Just didn't care about the characters or storyline.

May has lost her job to the artificial intelligence that she helped create, and forced with late bills and the increasing cost of living, she agrees to undergo a controversial surgery that will change her features just enough to make her invisible to facial recognition programs — and she'll get paid enough to do it to cover the bills for a while. When she gets paid, May decides to splurge on a couple of nights in the botanical garden, a walled, nature-filled resort that she would never have been able to afford otherwise. To fully appreciate the nature, however, she asks her husband and two children to be completely unplugged while they're on the short vacation — which starts out OK, but takes a disastrous turn when the kids wander off on their own.

It's not clear from the book when or where this story takes place, but while there is a bit more technology than we have today (the titular hums, for example, are humanoid AI robots), the prevalence of surveillance technology and the monetization of EVERYTHING seems disturbingly similar to what we're seeing today. May's experiences throughout the book (especially after the trip to the garden) are scarily relatable, and through her actions and reactions, Hum offers a meditation on technology and what it means to be a good mother. A fantastic, thought-provoking book, and I can't wait to recommend it widely.

I was such a fan of Helen Phillips' THE NEED that HUM was an immediately request when I saw it pop up. I just knew I was in for something unexpected. And I was right! HUM is a slightly terrifying look into a very possible near future, with climate change altering the face of NYC, AI robots taking over our day to day lives, and children become way too attached to their screens.

After May, our protagonist, loses her job, she goes to a company that will pay her a full year's salary to slightly altar her face in order to bypass surveillance devises. With this money, she splurges on tickets for her and her family to visit the city's botanical gardens. But these are unlike today's botanical gardens. In this time period, they are more like a theme park - with overnight stays, fully indoor lush forests, fake waterfalls, and AI robots in the middle of what seems like Times Square. This is because New York no longer has plant life, agriculture, or parks. It is a privilege for the wealthy, and this is just the tip of the iceberg for the almost horror story that is HUM.

When things go upside down and video of May looking like a bad mother goes viral, the plot takes off into almost thriller territory. I had such a hard time putting this book down as I had to know what happened next, and I was always surprised. Phillips is so amazing at rich, solid world-building and this is certainly where the book shines. I wasn't crazy about the ending though, I wanted a little bit more and it left me with more questions, but if I think what happened is what happened, it's a pretty bold move.

Due to be published in August, this is the “internet novel.” Phillips knows how to make her reader extraordinarily uncomfortable with familiarity, the call is coming from inside the house.

I read Phillips' previous novel, The Need, in one sitting; the book pulled me right in and I couldn't leave without finishing! Hum has a similar urgency behind it - short chapters and frequent line breaks encourage this feeling. As in The Need, the desperation and the fierceness of motherhood feature heavily in this book. I am not a mother and don't always jibe with these themes, but Phillips writes in such a way that you don't need to ever have been in the trenches to appreciate May's fatigue and her intensity. And while I may not have children, I was once a child who went on family vacations and am now an adult who understands how fleeting that family time is, which is to say that Part 2 in the botanical garden left me emotional. I'd like to think that May and Jem have another such excursion with their children in the future, where they experience both nature and togetherness, but May is clear that their expected finances won't allow it and I believe her. Still, even for those with the means for a vacation every year: your children are only the age that they are for a single day at a time. Whether the world is burning slowly or quickly, whether you're in a speculative fiction novel or 21st century America, whether you're camping in a walled botanical garden or in true wilderness, you get only 24 hours with your family as it is today. Part 2 brings this into sharp and heightened focus by making the vacation so desperately sought, so brief, and so expensive. But the underlying principle - the brevity of our circumstances, of childhood, of family life - remains true in our world too.

3.5 stars. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Positives: Extremely readable with a high "just one more chapter" factor. Timely themes with some interesting world building.

Negatives: I never really felt like I got to know the protagonist, so I was fairly unsympathetic to her quirks. I felt vaguely annoyed at her almost the entire time. Which maybe says something about me, but alas..

Also, the themes were a bit too heavy handed at times.

I really enjoyed Helen Phillips' other book “The Need,” so I was very excited to get a copy of this one to review! She’s a great writer. Every sentence feels well crafted and thoughtful. This story has some similar themes to the other one, (motherhood, identity), but is very unique and takes surprising turns. I'm typically not a big sci-fi reader, but I would categorize this as more of a thriller with sci-fi elements, and I love her prose.

Without spoiling too much, it involves a futuristic society that feels very familiar and real, as if aside from the robots most of it is already happening. (The ads catered to each individual, the face-scanning cameras, etc.) I generally love books or movies involving artificial intelligence and the robots in this, called Hums, came across as brilliant, sweet and patient. I loved them. (Of course, there are times during the story’s conflict when the Hums’ intentions can seem a little ominous.) I am clearly very influenced by video games when I visualize while reading, because I kept picturing the Hums as sleeker, more adult versions of the maintenance bots from “Five Nights at Freddy’s: Security Breach.” IYKYK. People can also scan each other with their phones and know everything about their lives, like something out of Cyberpunk or Watchdogs.

May, the protagonist, is both frustrating and sympathetic. She absolutely makes some boneheaded decisions and she ends up paying dearly for them, but the author does a great job of explaining her thought process. I loved the concept of the heavenly Botanical Garden right in the middle of the trashy big city where people could vacation. (Of course, it costs a crazy amount of money to stay there.) But they check into their cottage in this gorgeous forest and one of the first things May's son says is, “This would be the perfect place to hide during a lockdown!” This was, of course, tragic, but overall I found the son, Sy, to be temperamental and selfish. I know he’s just a child but I was not a fan of him at all. I don’t pretend to know anything about kids, honestly, but both kids in this book were rude and had no respect for their mom. The husband, Jem, wasn’t exactly ideal, either. I was suspicious of him for most of the book, to be honest.

I'm not sure I completely understood everything that was happening at the end, specifically in the last couple of chapters and involving some of the deeper dialogue. So that's why I'm giving it a 4 instead of a 5. But I really liked this! Phillips has now won me over with two books involving heavy themes of mothers trying to protect their children, something I personally can't relate to, and I think that says something for her skill as an author.

I really wanted to like this more than I did. I've seen great things about other Helen Phillips books in review spaces, but really couldn't buy in to this one. This book is trying to say a lot, and while I enjoyed the world building and setting (and liked the real-world dystopian news that was used as a back drop) I ultimately felt like it never managed to tell me much?

There was a tension and ever-present dread, and the book was a quick read, but the pacing felt off and some of the character decisions just felt bizarre. It feels like the book had a lot of disjointed threads, and some of them never quite went anywhere. Maybe because I'm not a mother I can't put myself in the May's shoes.

Regardless, there are some cool elements, it didn't land for me, but may work for you.

If you are a fan of Dystopian stories, this is a great read. The thought that this could be in our future some day really makes you think. It made me even more interested in the story of May abd her family.

The opening of this book is so arresting that I missed a train stop. Phillips’ evocation of (and invented vocabulary for) a near-future Neo York dystopia is razor sharp and alarmingly familiar to anyone adjacent to the precarity of gig work. Ultimately Hum has a more limited focus and narrower stylistic range than I might have hoped; it’s a family portrait and a slice of life under a regime of AI, ecocide, and surveillance capitalism rather than a far-reaching or revolutionary investigation of their ramifications. The Botanical Garden setting is indeed “creepy,” as is the uncanny closing scene, though I find myself coming away with what feel like significant unanswered questions—who, for example, controls the hums, and why do the characters themselves appear so incurious about it?

"Hum" describes a near-future dystopia and is both brilliant and, painfully, too real and close for comfort. In brief, May lost her job to AI, and her family is struggling financially. She agrees to take part in a program to determine if surgery can fool facial recognition technology. Their world is full of "hums," which are small AI robots that run all service jobs. With the sum May gets for undergoing surgery to change her face, she treats her family to three days in the Botanic Gardens, a "forest" in the middle of the city. I imagine it's like if Central Park was completely walled off and turned into a luxury resort. Any time spent in nature, even carefully curated, man-made "nature," is an enormous luxury, and she wants her children to experience it. The entire family (including the smallest child) is addicted to personal tech devices, of which they have several iterations. May makes a decision to go techless for just the brief period of time while they are in the resort, which kicks off a series of consequences.

The book is haunting, highlighting tech anxieties and parental anxieties. More disturbingly, the author includes endnotes in the back with citations showing that many of specific incidents in her book have already occurred. I finished this book a few weeks ago, and it continues to haunt me. It's an anxious but thought-provoking read.

A hard to put down character driven story in an AI driven world with subtle commentary on how we currently connect and/or disconnect with technology. The author weaved in several thought-provoking elements such as addiction to technology, environmental harm, and the fallibility we find ourselves consumed with as parents learning every day how to raise our children in the best possible way we can. My heart ached as May found herself in a terrible situation that spiraled in this world where information spreads like wildfire (something we all understand since it happens in modern day times.) I cared deeply for this family and just wanted them to succeed after feeling like I was walking through every scene with them. I also loved reading about the Hums and wish I could read more about their backstory and how they operate. This is a must read for anyone interested in artificial intelligence, technology, and the implications it can have on the microcosm of our family units.

Thank you NetGalley and S&S for this ARC!!

She is seriously the master of a quick gut-punch that reveals and comments on all the fears of a mother trying to hold herself and her family together.

This book is quite anxiety inducing and a real page turner. It keeps the reader on their toes for most of the time, but the writing feels somewhat artificial, lacking the authenticity of real conversations among people. Apart from May, the other characters feel one dimensional, Jem seems solely preoccupied with money worries, while the kids come across as creepier and more annoying versions of typical tweens. The naming of the gadgets also feels out of place and kind of unfitting -Bunnies and Hum? The ending feels rather abrupt considering the high-stakes plot buildup.
overall, I appreciated the critique of the hyperconsumerist push of the media industries and the rampant spread of misinformation, as well as the commentary on the attention economy. These are important topics that deserve more attention.
P.S. The blurb does an excellent job of attracting readers, I must say.

Overall, I would rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars. Thanks to Simon Element and NetGalley for providing me with the ARC.

Helen Phillips is a wonder. Through the eyes of an underemployed, financially distressed mom in the near future, HUM captures both the worst of what's coming and the ethical quandaries we are all dealing with today, from overconsumption (just one more Amazon order!) to everyday digital addiction and consumer choices that are destroying the very world we know we will miss desperately in just decades, if not years. I won't outline the plot--you'll see it summarized elsewhere, and for most readers, I'd say the less you know going into this book, the better. Phillips excels at portraying kids realistically--fantastic dialogue and characterization on every page--and the deep interiority of her narrator creates nearly suffocating tension. While the plot and world are upsetting, the book is enlivened with wit and heart.

HUM feels like a wake-up call. The author's braiding of real news events and poignant quotes (clearly noted in endnotes) reinforces the feeling that this hypothetical future is really now, or even yesterday. Is it too late to choose a different future?

This book is likely to be my favorite of the year.

May loses her job to AI in a city beset with climate change and full of intelligent robots called “hums.” The unemployed May is desperate so she undergoes an experiment where her face is subtlely altered so it won’t be recognized by facial recognition, for which she is paid.

Afterward, and as a treat for her husband, Jem, and children Lu and Sy she buys a three day pass for the city’s Botanical Garden. When they go, the family leaves their devices at home. But while there her children come under threat, a mother’s worst nightmare, and May must put her trust in a hum. And then things get worse.

Oh, I love me some dystopia and Phillips does that well. Plus she does a great job writing small children, “is Jesus made of bubbles?” Throughout the entire book, regardless of what is actually happening, there’s a thin layer of stress, which is the same feeling May must have all the time, living in this crazy, airless world, where she fears for the future of her children all the time.

As to the hums, I don’t know. To its have definitely been done better, for that, see the recently published ANIIE BOT, but, then, they aren’t all equal. I’m still on the fence about the hums, even the one(s) portrayed here.

Overall, a good, satisfying read that I enjoyed very much. I really like May and her family and, and this doesn’t happen to me often, I was actually sorry to see the book come to an end. Recommended….probably 4.4 stars, not in 5 star range because the book is called HUM and I felt like more could have been done with them.

"'Fuck,' he whispered, but not angrily, just with fatigue.

She stopped stirring the pasta and looked over at him, unsure about his tone."

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The writing in HUM was not very musical. At least, for me it wasn't. In fact it was kind of tone-deaf. I didn't understand its rhythms and progressions. It was a little one-note and the one note went on for far too long, in the manner that this music metaphor has gone on for far too long. That’s about all I can say about this novel without descending into purposeless cranky meanness, or reaching for another extended metaphor, except to add that I ever so many people love the books I don't, the way people love Taylor Swift and I don't, and I'm certain that this book will be a very great read for some people who aren't me..

When Helen Phillips puts a new book out, I'm first in line to request it!

Her lastest, Hum, is a creepy peek into a futuristic world in which natural forests and wild animals are things of the past and robots called hums intermingle with humanity.

May is a wife and mother and she's just lost her job to AI. Unsure when she'll land her next one, she decides to undergo experimental facial surgery that will alter her appearance just enough to confuse the ever present cameras throughout the city, but will beef up their bank account with nearly a year's worth of cash.

Only, she can't seem to stop purchasing friviolous things. No sooner does the money clear her account, with her skin still raw and painful from the surgery, she finds herself in line purchasing a weekend getaway for her and the family to The Botanical Gardens - a HUGE financial splurge, but one she's excited to share with the kids and her husband. The perfect retreat from the anxieties of the real world, a relaxing few days spent in an artifical woods complete with waterfalls, flora and fauna, and a much needed break from their cell phones and electronic addictions. But the trip quickly devolves into a mother's worst nightmare as she's forced to put her trust into a one of the hums when her children go missing.

Phillips is a master at threading unsettling, atmospheric undertones throughout her stories. It's a bit foreboding, and feels a lot like stepping through the looking glass: where the horrors of consumerism, climate change, our obsession with technology, and the unrelenting guilt and pressures of motherhood all come to a dark and cryptic head.