You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White is a rollercoaster of raw, unsettling, and yet, beautiful human emotions. This is White’s first adult horror novel and please be warned, this book is scary as hell. Crane is a mute, autistic, trans man, who has been assisting in the invasion of an alien infestation known as “the Hive”. When Crane suddenly finds out he is pregnant and the Hive demands the birth of the child at all costs, Crane’s resistance and desperation to end the pregnancy sets off a series of events that cause a whirlwind of panic, anger, and violence that no one could have anticipated. Andrew Joseph White has literally taken the rough and gritty underbelly of small town gas station, added literal piles of “worms and flies” or “the Hive” and created one of the scariest settings I’ve read in a long time. White has a natural way of writing body horror that pushes every boundary and deliberately disturbs the reader with stomach-twisting imagery. The book will have readers truly gasping and screaming all the way toward the very last page. (No joke, I had a truly visceral feeling of horror upon finishing the book.) If you are a fan of anxiety-inducing films like Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019) and also love a good gory Alien (1979) movie, you have to check out “You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White when it releases on September 9, 2025.
You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White, (List Price: $29, S&S/Saga Press, 9781668038079, September 2025)
Reviewed by Baldwin Bookseller, Baldwin & Co. in New Orleans, Louisiana
