Interesting concept and poignant subject given the emergence of AI in the social zeitgeist. Thought provoking and entertainment.

Relevant. Climate change, people being outsourced to AI and therefore are subjected to become guinea pigs in order to survive but arent we anyway? Gorgeous prose examines possibilities of utopia and dystopia and utopia and the fine line in between. Wonderful interrogation of surveillance., technological addiction, green blindness, and family survival.

Hum is a near-future speculative fiction tale brimming with interesting concepts that will make you think. It’s a quick read, and while I wish it had fleshed out the story and characters a bit more, it was still an entertaining read.

Thank you Helen Phillips, Marysue Rucci Books, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

Helen Phillips is the queen of dystopian workplace horror. This is her scariest thrilling book yet. You will not believe what you are reading.

I wasn't sure if this book would be for me. I don't often read speculative fiction. That said, as upsetting as the futuristic storyline with technology was, it didn't seem too far away from the possible reality. Once I got started reading, I didn't want to put it down to find out how the story would wrap up. I'm rating the book as how I enjoyed it 3.5 rounded up to 4 stars, but easily someone into this genre I would imagine would rate it 4 stars.

I just didn't like this book. There were jarring descriptions of things that weren't needed and so many of the characters were just plain unlikeable with no redeemable qualities.

I am so thankful to Simon and Schuster, Simon Audio, Helen Phillips, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this galley before publication day. I really enjoyed the dialogue and plot of this book and can’t wait to chat this one up with my friends!

I ended up enjoying this book more than I expected, considering the relatively low Goodreads rating. Like many good speculative fiction/dystopian stories, it’s largely depressing and then hopeful. The main character’s children and husband are often annoying and frustrating, but possibly redeem themselves in the end. I was fearful pretty much the entire time that the husband was cheating, but was so relieved that wasn’t the case! I’m not a mother, but I imagine many mothers would be able to empathize with the main characters’s complicated emotions and the need to come across as perfect to others at all times. I think the pacing of this book worked really well and am glad it was a quick read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Element for providing me access to this eARC for my honest opinion!

‘Hum’ by Helen Phillips is a book about a possible near future where technology takes an even bigger grasp of our lives.

When the book opens, May, a mother, is undergoing experimental surgery that will make her less recognizable to the world around her, especially the robotic ‘hums’ that are everywhere. The money will help keep her family afloat a little longer. She uses some of the money to buy her family a dream vacation at the botanical garden, a place where the climate hasn’t wreaked havoc. She has her husband leave behind their various devices, to the protests of her children and husband. This choice may come back to haunt her and her family.

The book strikes a good balance of how tech can help us and intrude in our lives. It shows a future where that is eroding our humanity even more and what identity and privacy look like when technology plays an even bigger role. I like the balance between dystopia and dark humor and this book shows that there are no easy answers, but we should be probably be asking the questions.

a lot of strength hidden in the iron spine of this work! a lot of interesting technological questions brought up. tysm for the arc, 4 stars.

This one definitely makes you think. It’s a dystopian novel where AI comes together with climate change and the economy is in big trouble. There are a lot of political aspects to keep up with, but it’s a very thought-provoking novel. Overall, good read!

I enjoyed the story enough to finish the book, but it wasn't something that I would choose to read again. I guess I could delve into the "deeper meanings" and pontificate on device use, consumerism, and motherhood, but I don't want to typically spend my free time thinking about crap that already keeps me awake at night.

Set in a very near and uncomfortably recognizable future shaped predominately by climate change, capitalism, and AI, May, a mother of two young children, undergoes an experimental procedure supposed to render her face unrecognizable to the relentless surveillance technology around her. She does this because her family is growing increasingly desperate for cash as she, the primary earner, recently worked herself out of a job in the AI industry and their only income now comes from her husband's gig work. With part of the payment she receives May purchases tickets to take her family to an Edenic botanical garden (sort of a Disney x nature mashup), a walled refuge in the middle of their city. What is supposed to be a technology-free trip of a lifetime has unexpected consequences for May's family.

Hum is best described as literary slice of life fiction set in a speculative dystopian world; literary fiction with sci-fi elements. I think this is an important distinction for proper expectations. It's about the relationship between humans and AI centering a family grappling with the inescapability of technology in a world increasingly unhospitable to humans. The story reads like something of a parable with undertones of horror, but the scariest part isn't the believable near future world building, but rather the mirror it holds up to our present reality.

I love-loved Helen Phillip's previous novel The Need. Hum didn't quite reach that level for me, but I quite appreciated the story and it definitely got under my skin in an uncomfortable and unignorable way.

“The thing is, May,” the hum said, “the goal of advertising is to rip a hole in your heart so it can then fill that hole with plastic, or with any other materials that can be yanked out of the earth and, after brief sojourns as objects of desire, be converted to waste.”

A near future with climate change, mass surveillance, and a lack of jobs forces one young Mom to alter her face to get ahead. She now can avoid facial recognition, but this seemingly mundane process causes havoc in her life. She pays for a great vacation for her family at the Botanical Gardens. However, even that leads to her face being actually recognized in the worst way.

One of the most stressful aspects of this story was the robots (known as hums) constantly trying to sell something. It's a sharp contrast to the hardscrabble life of the main characters to feel the relief of buying whatever they are selling, even if what they are selling is hollow.

I enjoyed the ending with Hum comforting the family. The story was stressful, and this ending was a reminder of what is important.

'm a big fan of speculative fiction that explores technological advances and climate change. While the world Phillips creates seems distant, it feels eerily familiar. I appreciated the thought-provoking questions about technology dependence, the strengths and weaknesses of AI-driven societies, and how everyday choices can be impacted by growing reliance on technology.
As a parent, it was really easy to relate to May's plight. While she had her kids’ best interests in mind, her decisions didn’t lead to the outcomes she hoped for (kids just don’t have a magical time when you want them to). But I also loved the commentary of how hard it is to make decisions related to kids when it comes to things like devices and screen times and what age and how to manage all that.
That said, I found the narrative somewhat monotonous. While it effectively conveyed a specific atmosphere, the lack of variation occasionally detracted from the reading experience. Beyond that this was a thought provoking, concise and dystopian exploration of our dependence on technology.

While this book takes place in a not so distant future, it speaks to today and where we might be headed. At the center of the story is May Webb, who we first encounter getting paid for a micro-plastic surgery that will alter her face in such a small way, while her it will still evade facial recognition. She and her family desperately need this money.

This future is populated by robots called a Hum. They are helpful, do many things, such as the robot conducting the facial surgery. May splurges with the money to take her family on a vacation to stay in the botanical garden for a few nights. Something she feels she desperately needs, nature, a forest. We also sense May wants to find a deeper connection to her two kids, and hopes to get that with this vacation. To ensure that, she takes their “bunnies” away from them. (This becomes a major plot point later.) These bunnies are devices attached to children wrists that seem like they are like phones. In this future people are very attached to their phones, much like today.

The writing was good, and found that the kids are very well portrayed. Maybe one of the better portrayals of children I’ve read in a while.
This book tries to address several topics some more subtly than others, such as rich being able to afford to turn off the constant bombardment of advertising; or how mothers are being taken to account for their children’s welfare more than fathers. There were other topics raised but not fully addressed, which leaves these open hanging issues…such as that facial surgery. This glossing over key elements of the book detracted from the overall quality of the book.

Phillips wonderfully captures the near future of AI and the erasure of individual thought. Hum peers into our near reality and pulls at every anxiety of the reader. The novella follows a family whose relationships are tumultuous and growing more distant every page on a vacation to a utopian garden where there is nature and clean air. However, the family is reminded that big brother is watching everywhere even in the blissful gardens.

Thank you to Simon element at Marysue Rucci Books and NetGalley for the arc!

Timely dystopia for these days where we give away a lot of information and control to AI and other little helpers. I don't know of what day and age this story was telling, but I found it little too disturbing to sell one's face to get some money to be able to pay rent. I have this weird feeling that it might be closer than I think.

We meet May on an operation table where her face was getting slightly altered in exchange for a sum of money and this would make her unrecognizable by the tracker cameras. However, this operation would make her unrecognizable to anyone else. Needing money and not having a job, this sounded like a good deal to May. Unfortunately, just like every other too good to be true deals, this one had a catch too. A catch, she might realize when it was too late.

We had good old cell phone dystopias, then came internet dystopias, followed by Covid dystopias. Now we are at AI dystopias. Scare tactics stayed the same, means to scare changed over the years. I expect few more of these to come in near future, but this one I think has that first mover advantage. Let's see what else is in the store

*Hum* is a gripping speculative fiction novel that delves into the challenges of family and identity in a world ravaged by climate change and advanced technology. When May loses her job to AI, her desperate attempts to alleviate her family's financial woes lead her to undergo an extreme transformation that masks her identity from the pervasive surveillance of society. Her decision to take her family on a tech-free retreat to the Botanical Garden—a lush sanctuary amidst a crumbling world—reveals deeper tensions as they confront their dependence on devices and the fragility of their connections. This taut narrative offers a thought-provoking exploration of motherhood, resilience, and the complexities of modern life, making it a compelling read for anyone interested in the intersections of technology and humanity. Readers will appreciate how Helen Phillips deftly combines urgency and emotional depth, making *Hum* a powerful reflection on our current dilemmas and potential futures.

Speculative fiction at its finest- and scariest! This novel is suspenseful while tackling themes of motherhood, identity, and the unknown... Every page buzzes with tension, and Phillips' writing is both poetic and razor-sharp. I couldn’t put it down—her ability to make the ordinary seem compelling and vice versa is *chef's kiss* If you love psychological thrillers that make you question reality, this one’s a must-read!