Hum: A Novel Authored By Helen Phillips

In Hum, named among the Most Anticipated Books by Goodreads, LitHub, and Book Riot, Helen Phillips delivers a tense and unflinching dystopian thriller set in a world deeply impacted by climate change and rapid technological advancement. In a city overwhelmed by environmental decay and populated by intelligent robots known as “hums,” May’s life is upended when she loses her job to artificial intelligence.

Desperate to provide for her family and alleviate their mounting debt, May volunteers for a radical experiment that alters her appearance, making her unrecognizable to surveillance systems. In a bid to escape their daily struggles and her family’s obsessive device usage, she treats them to a rare experience: three nights in the Botanical Garden, a lush, green sanctuary amid a deteriorating world. However, convincing her family to disconnect from their devices proves more challenging than she anticipated, and the garden’s beauty fails to provide the solace she had hoped for.

When her children face a grave threat, May finds herself relying on a hum with dubious intentions. As she battles to protect her family and restore their lives, the stakes escalate, revealing uncomfortable truths about her world and herself.

Phillips' Hum is a speculative fiction tour de force that interrogates themes of marriage, motherhood, and personal identity against a backdrop of a world grappling with both dystopian decay and potential utopian escape. Jeff VanderMeer praises the novel for its incisive exploration of present-day anxieties through a speculative lens, making Hum a compelling and thought-provoking read. 📚❤️