You Weren’t Meant to be Human by Andrew Joseph White: Review & Analysis
The cultier side of found family
Introduction
I mentioned You Weren't Meant to be Human (2025) last week in my review of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, but wanted to also give it it's own brief time in the spotlight because the comparison I drew really only reflects the tiniest part of this book.
I'd previously [attempted to] read Andrew Joseph White's YA Hell Followed With Us (2022) for another book club earlier this year. While I enjoyed his monsters and metaphors, the YA-ness of it repelled me pretty strongly. Probably doesn't help that he was both leaning into every dystopia trope that I grew up with in the genre and that the (out)cast were somehow also so perfectly diverse and progressive and twee in their queerness. But as I've said around here a thousand times, YA ain't for me.
Luckily, I only realized You Weren't Meant to be Human was by the same author after already getting fully stuck into the audiobook on a long walk. Despite both books bearing the horror label and being about young trans men navigating life as outcasts in near-future dystopias, White holds back zero of life's darkness and cruelty in this second work. It is jaw-droppingly gory and violent and horrifying in a multitude of ways, and it delivers exquisitely on everything it puts its reader and characters through.
If you consider that praise, please go give it a read yourself! If it sounds like it's not for you, it probably isn't. (But you'll never know unless you try it!)
Spoilers and all of the content warnings ahead.
Acceptance vs. Acquisition
The book is entirely from Crane's point of view. He's an autistic, mute trans man in his early twenties, in a near-future America where laws and attitudes have only become more conservative (and the backsliding from our current progressive era has made transphobia that much more potent).
Crane grew up as Sophie, to loving parents and at the top of his class. Despite nothing about his life being visibly wrong, he was tortured internally by the masks he felt forced to wear over his autism and gender dysphoria. On the night of his high school graduation, Crane intended to finally fulfil his fantasy of burning his face off. Before he could act, a huge swarm of flies and worms appeared and spoke to him, telling him that this world wasn't made for people like him and that it could offer him a home and place to be his true self.
And that's where we find Crane at the start of the book, in a middle-of-nowhere gas station under control of the Hive, along with a few others it has taken in and employed. One such is Levi, a former marine around ten years Crane's senior, and with whom Crane is in an abusive relationship. (As I mentioned last week, violence and sex are deeply intertwined for Crane. So he spends most of the book thinking relatively well of this relationship, which is horrible and stomach-churning in a different way in case the flesh-eating swarm wasn't doing it for the reader.)
Then Crane learns he's pregnant, despite taking testosterone and not having his period. Then he learns the Hive wants this, despite its promises that he can be his truest self here. Much pain and struggle and body horror ensues!
The worldbuilding and characters do a lot to elevate this book for me where a few other pregancy horror books have absolutely failed this year. Sure the Hives are pretty simple stand-ins for cult leaders when you get down to it, but their alien nature works wonders thematically and in building the tension and horror. The fact that most of the people around Crane are genuinely good and care about him, yet that at the start he still places the most trust and loyalty in Levi and the Hive? That feeling of horror when there are no obvious villains but everything's still going to shit? So disturbing and well done.
Because ultimately, this is a story where Crane's found family turns out to be truly terrible for him—just as thousands of cults have been for hundreds of thousands of people in our own history. The Hive offers Crane a blank cheque of acceptance, which comes with none of the baggage of simply going to his parents with his problems and identity, but does mean abandoning everything on faith. And it ultimately just wants him as a servant and a surrogate—a tool, not a person. And the other people there don't have the same sway to help him, either from the Hive or from Levi. Not to mention the additional layer of becoming nonverbal, and how much more agency that takes away from him through all of this.
I won't spoil the exact ending, but suffice to say that it's surprisingly happy and cathartic—albeit after some of the goriest passages I've ever read. This isn't a Negative Space or The Bee Sting where trauma only begets more trauma, thankfully. But it sure looks and feels like it, which is great horror storytelling in a nutshell.
Burn the Hive
Short and sweet today, but I wanted to just mention Stagger before I go. A former human, presumably, filled and partially animated by 'exiled' worms from a Hive. He shows up to cut off Crane's attempt at getting an abortion, then becomes a watchdog over Crane's pregnancy to ensure nothing happens to the fetus.
But there's also some genuine humanity and empathy in there!? Because he and Crane develop a real, warm and caring bond, which Crane hasn't had since his parents, if ever. For a character that's questionably sentient and speaks not a single word throughout, it's truly remarkable how much I came to care about the wormy guy.
As I said at some point in the past couple weeks, don't judge a book by its cover—or in this case, an author by his YA debut. Andrew Joseph White came to this book with claws out and bloody, and I was truly blown away by it from start to finish.
A final shoutout: the audiobook narration of the Hive's lines is one of the best things I've ever heard? Genuinely hard to understand for how buzzing and grotesque and alien it sounds, but goddamn it added so much to the alien parent/malevolent character over the course of the book.
Check it out if you have a chance and the stomach for it! Any thematic details I missed that you found particularly meaningful or fascinating? I'd love to hear!
Thanks for reading and until next time <3
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