This novel was sad and depressing to me. I'm not sorry I read it, but I was very glad to be out of it!

Hum captures the dread, anxiety, and chaos that comes with being a caregiver in an age of environmental danger and pervasive technology. These feelings emerge sharply from May's narration as she attempts to protect her children from a world dependent on AI called "Hum" assistants and the environmental decline.

May longs for the unattainable: true nature, not the synthetic recreations of nature the AI presents. This longing feels nostalgic and human, which is contrasted with the unending advertisements, fake niceties, and privacy invasions the Hums bombard the family with.

This book has a lot of great elements, but I wanted more from them.

This book had me engage right from the beginning. It is very timely in the concepts it deals with AI, climate change, urban decay and bringing children into and up in a world with these things ever present. I was with the story all the way to the end but the ending lost me a bit and seemed a little Pollyannaish. It was a quick read that takes the big topics that it deals with and places real people and their lives within these confines. Overall an interesting and engaging read.

"Hum" by Helen Phillips

Thank you NetGalley and Simon Element | S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books for permitting me to read this work before its publication date.

May and her husband used to have steady jobs, but their positions were rendered obsolete by AI and robots. Desperate to manage their bills and enjoy a few luxuries, May ops for an experimental procedure and uses the money to take her family on a getaway to a botanical garden. Resenting the hold that technology has on her family, she decides to leave her phone and home and makes her children leave their "bunnies" (interactive AI toys) home as well. When the trip takes an unexpected turn, May faces the consequences of trying to live without tech, altering her face for profit, and her strained relationship with her spouse.
This dystopian novel is necessary and deeply sobering. At a time when children use tablets throughout the day, we're all attached to our tech, and facial recognition is being used more and more, this read does not seem to be set in a distant future. This novel feels like it took place 5 to 10 years from now, and it was scary as hell.

I love Helen Phillips and her brilliance at the sentence level. She is so clever with reader expectations and shifting them in terms of how a story will play out. Phillips has taken many fears of our own and given them deep tweaks to really alarm us and enhance the possibilities of a new world, one in which our sense of reality and fear of changes clash.

Superbly written speculative fiction about a struggling mother desperately trying to hold her family together in a dystopian, climate ravaged, corpo-surveillance state. The themes of technology addiction, loss of privacy and constantly being sold something aren't subtle, and are just prescient enough to illicit plenty of interpretation (and misinterpretation).

*ARC provided by NetGalley & Simon Element*

As an introduction to a near future “peopled” with AI beings called “Hums”, the author has created a tense atmosphere with her prose. A mother/family breadwinner has just lost her job. The novel follows her emotionally as she tries to cope with a limited income, global warming, overwhelming technology, and, unexpectedly, the possible loss of her two young children.

Other than the mother, character development is sparse. Even the physical surroundings are told to us, not described for the reader to discover. The need for human interaction with other humans and with nature is key.

Thanks to NetGalley and Marysue Rucci Books/Simon and Schuster for the ARC to read and review.

I’m not really sure what I just read?! This was an interesting one that I was not expecting at all. This was super dystopian and sometimes I had a hard time visualizing some situations. The story was new and different with strong opinion about technology, the future, social media, cancel culture, and motherhood. An interesting and quick read.

Series Info/Source: This is a stand alone book. I got a copy of this on ebook through NetGalley to review.

Thoughts: This was an intriguing read that kept me entertained and was thought-provoking. I think my only complaint was that it ended incredibly abruptly, and I wasn't really sure what happened at the ending even though I read the ending multiple times.

The story follows May. She lost her job to AI and is struggling with her husband (who does odd jobs) to make ends meet. When an opportunity comes up to be a guinea pig in a process that alters her face so that it can't be recognized by surveillance in exchange for huge sum of money, she jumps at the chance. She also decides after the procedure to use some of the money to book a weekend at the lush Botanical Garden resort, which ends up having bigger ramifications for her family than she expected.

There were some things I enjoyed about this and some things I found confusing. I enjoyed the world-building here; the Hum are AI robots that work service jobs. There is a hint that they might be more human than they appear, but this isn't explored in detail. They do both harm and help, and it is hard to tell if the harm is intentional or just part of them trying to help. They are not a huge part of the story but more in the background.

I also enjoyed the depiction of May and her family trying to survive in this world that is slowly sliding into extinction. This is not an apocalyptic setting; things are just slowly getting harder for humanity to deal with. The settings are recognizable and even the issues they face on a day to day level (air quality, food quality, etc) are issues that are seen today...just worse.

The book is less clear on the story and the purpose of the story, which shifts around as you read. First, you think there is a going to be a big plot about May's face getting altered and this does have impact on the story but it's not as much as you think it would. Then you think the story will be about the humanity of the Hum, but again, this is more of an element woven into the background. Then you think something will happen at the Botanical Gardens and it kind of does, but then it doesn't. There is a lot of May fighting against the technology her kids use and discussing both the benefits and detriments of having them "unhooked" from this system.

In the end, this is an intriguing and thought-provoking read. It is more of a look into a chaotic time in the life of this family rather than any one story or message. It touches on many issues but doesn't fully explore or resolve any of them. In the end, does May's face change really matter? Is it wrong to take her kids' tech away from them? Is technology good or is it bad or is it both? Was humanity right to create the Hum or not? These issues are all explored lightly but never deeply discussed and never resolved.

This was well written and easy to read. I found it engaging and intriguing. I was just disappointed in how open-ended everything was left and at how unfocused and wandering the story was.

My Summary (4/5): Overall I mostly enjoyed this but was a bit disappointed in how ambiguous the ending was and how unfocused the themes in the story were. I did enjoy the look into a normal family trying to survive in a near future Earth where things aren't apocalyptic but are just a bit worse than they are now. The questions around technology and the ambiguity of whether it is helpful or harmful were intriguing as well. I will keep an eye out for Phillips' future books because I did enjoy some of the concepts in here.

What an interesting near future book this is! A great concept and completely viable which makes it compelling and a little disconcerting.
Hums are everywhere watching, helping, recording and advertising while phones are still in everyone’s hands and the children wear ‘bunnies’ to allow them to communicate and be tracked. Deliveries and taxis are all driverless and efficient.
The story is still very human and drew me in from beginning to end. I found rooting for May and Gem while also finding them quite frustrating.
A quick satisfying read about AI and what it may become.

Hum by Helen Phillips follows May, a mother who lives in world rocked by climate change and consumerism. In a desperate attempt to help her family financially, May undergoes a procedure to change her face. With a little extra money in hand, May takes her family on a vacation that doesn’t go according to plan.

I loved this book. It felt very much like an episode of Black Mirror with the way May and her family dealt with technology in this world. The idea of the Hums (the artifical intelligence) was equal parts interesting and terrifying. I loved all the different small tech items that were in this book. Like the bunnies and the wooms.

I loved how this book felt so sci-fi and futuristic but also like it could really happen. Like this could be a plausible future which adds to the horror of it. The theme of motherhood is heavy in this book much like the last book I read by this author, The Need. I can see that not working for some people or being a little too much but I thought it was perfect. The way the children characters were constantly talking and talking over each other felt so true to how kids actually are.

This book is pretty short and very fast paced so it’s hard to really talk about it without spoiling it but I would highly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of Black Mirror or science fiction books that deal with climate change. I know I’m going to be thinking about this book for a long time.

I was totally engrossed while reading and was particularly fascinated by the depiction of a not unlikely future where we are addicted to devices, yet still craving our lost natural world. In addition to being a commentary on where we may be headed as a civilization, it is also a view of how our most intimate familial relationships are impacted by this "brave new world". That said, I found the ending unsatisfying in its vagueness. On reflection, it was an interesting read, but not one worth revisiting.

If this is what happens in an AI run future, I don't want it. I am definitely drawn into these types of books and equally appalled while reading. This book felt so real I could see this becoming actual reality in the not so distant future. If you are a fan of dystopian/speculative fiction and AI taking a more prominent role in our every day lives, this book will be a great read for you. It's a pretty quick read and left me feeling a bit apprehensive of what the future may hold but I suppose that is the point. I will say I wouldn't mind a woom of my own though! :)

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon Element | S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books for access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I read “Hum” by Helen Phillips in less than 4 hours.
I guess it’s be categorized as sci-fi in that it deals with a terrifying future of abysmal climate change, out of control AI, and a mother, May, attempting to navigate this world while caring for her two children.
Definitely a page turner and thought provoking

An interesting take about AI and family that reminded me of Klara and the Sun and other literary takes on technological dystopia and climate change. Not my favorite in terms of writing style—both the sentences and chapters felt clipped—but the shallowness here might be more thematic than I'm giving it credit for.

Hum is a dystopian family story with themes of distrust of AI, Climate change, viral negativity and cancel culture. This is a different take on the concerns that AI will take over the world or replace all the jobs. Those have been done very well by Sci Fi stories, but this one varies. A lot of what we call AI today is just plagiarism software, although much of it is convenient. In the universe in which Hum is set, AI is very driven to consumerism and much more obvious in how it wants us to consume and buy things. Air quality is awful and the temperature is 149. It isn't possible to be outside without help.

May undergoes face surgery for money in order to provide her family with a nice vacation. In an effort to connect more, she disconnects her phone and her partner Jem's phone, and their children's wrist devices. From our standpoint, this seems reasonable and a nice thing to do. This definitely blows up and causes a negative viral reaction. Going viral for a negative reason is impossible for regular people even today, and sometimes celebrities.

All good Sci Fi is a commentary on society, and is important to understand the concerns of what is happening today.
thanks to NetGalley and Marysue Rucci Books and Simon element for the ARC.

In a world where AI is getting more and more prominent, this was a very interesting and at the same time a bit frightening book. It made me think about the way we interact with and take care of the world and the people around us. At its core it’s a story about family and motherhood and the things we do to keep our children safe and happy.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon Element for the ARC!

Helen Phillips’s "Hum" is a crackling interrogation of the cost of convenience.

Recently, the internet has been feeling claustrophobic—when I check the weather, I have to watch an ad for allergy medications. Every time I look at instagram, it’s almost 70% targeted content. If I try to read the news, it’s either locked behind a paywall or sponsored by companies who benefit from controlling it. If I want to opt out, I can pay to have my own time back in an “ad-free experience.”

It seems like the entirety of the human experience is problematized so that a solution can be sold.

This is also the world "Hum" takes place in.

It would be easy to dismiss the book as an anti-AI, woe-is-me, “cellphones are destroying us” take on life, but it’s not that. It’s not even a dystopia in the way the marketing copy suggests. This is a story about how everything that makes life easier actually distances us from it—a world where predictive text begins to flatten and anonymize something as simple as a text between spouses. Phillips is unconcerned with the usual tropes of AI usurping our humanity; she’s more interested in how companies market the idea of humanity itself. Like our own world, the novel’s surveillance state isn’t managed by a shadowy government—it’s handled by corporations who know and exploit our buying habits.

The plot is simple, centering primarily on a brief family vacation in the Botanical Garden, an AirBnB-like resort that offers an escape from the polluted, noise-filled air of the city. It’s a smart way to depict the artifice of “authenticity," and it’s an effective backdrop for Phillips to critique iPad kids and instagram parents. That sounds simplistic, but it works because the author is so careful in how she depicts the family’s relationships to each other. They are victimized and intentionally isolated by predatory technology. At one point, the protagonist realizes that the four family members are not sharing twenty-four hours in a day; they are dividing ninety-six hours because each person is so detached.


This is a breezy book with big questions (there’s a fairly robust compendium of research at the end), and Phillips invites us to wrestle with the discomfort of a paywall between the world and the self. In other words, "Hum" asks us to think about the reality we already inhabit and encourages us to, well, touch grass while we still can.

Helen Phillips is one of my favorite authors. Her stories always unnerve me and set me on edge, and for different reasons each time. I never know what to expect when I start one of her books, but I know it’ll twist my stomach into knots somehow.

Hum did not disappoint. The world building was great and terrifying. The technology and the acceptance of the lack of privacy wasn’t as far fetched as I wish it was. I was tense from the very beginning to the very end. (The way the main character kept doing the wrong thing and every time I thought “well, that’s probably what I would do too” only added to my stress!)

Hum is a warning cry. This isn’t just a story, this is our future.

Deeply unsettling, particularly depressing, a little boring. It’s how the working class survives in a technologically advanced world where everything is available but not how it should be and the cost of advancement is the environment, self and family. It is a timely read though.

*Thank you H. Phillips and S&S/ Marysue Rucci Books for the, Hum ARC.

This would be a very satisfying read for fans of Margaret Atwood. The story was scariest because it feels like we're not too far away from this future.