26. Wild Card: You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White

List Progress: 4/30

It’s been a while since I’ve written a full book review. Partly from being busy, and partly because it’s been a bit since I’ve read a book that demanded to be discussed. This book demands to be discussed.

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is the adult debut novel of YA author Andrew Joseph White and it is a horror novel. But this is not a case where “horror” is simply synonymous with “frightening” or “spooky”. This novel is one of the best encapsulations of “horror” at its base definition: something revolting, repellent, shocking and, yes, frightening, all mixed into a potent soup of plot and tone. So much of what happens in this book is so disgusting and visceral that it feels difficult to recommend. Many readers will set it down after the first chapter. The few who continue will adore it.

Set in a depressingly-near future, You Weren’t Meant to Be Human follows Crane, a mute autistic trans man living in small town West Virginia. After a mental health crisis at the end of high school, he fell under the thrall of the hive: a sentient, psychic, possibly-alien mass of worms and flies that guide its followers to serve and kill for it, while offering them little more than basic acceptance of their identities. When Crane becomes pregnant by his abusive boyfriend, a hunter for the hive, he tries to get an abortion (already a difficult prospect in a world of legal restrictions, as Roe v. Wade fell when Crane was a child), but is stopped when the hive demands that he carry the fetus to term and offer it to the hive as a new follower. What follows is endless months of body dysmorphia and the trauma of forced pregnancy, with safeguards in place to stop him from even taking his own life, lest he deny the hive what it wants. His boyfriend, the hive, and the whole world see people with uteruses as fleshy hosts, be it for fetuses or worms, and Crane is just along for the ride into hell.

The list of trigger warnings is about as long as the book itself: violence, sexual violence, abuse, body horror, gore, forced pregnancy, pregnancy as body horror, torture, mutilation, self-harm, cannibalism, murder, transphobia, homophobia, misogyny and worms. At least four of those are present in the first chapter. Many readers will (justifiably) consider this far too much, or gratuitous, or literally unreadable. But for those who want to come along for the journey, there is a lot to connect with in Crane and his rag-tag community, both fellow worm-thralls and his few connections to his previous life. Andrew Joseph White is very upfront about being autistic and trans and having a lot in common with Crane, and Crane’s inner thoughts subsequently feel very rich and lived it. A lot of the novel feels like a scream, of anguish and rage and fear, but a scream coming from a very human throat. It’s a defiant scream, one worth listening to.

Would I Recommend It: Not to most people. But for a very, very, very specific reader, it is wonderful.