 Thanks to partners NetGalley, Simon Element, and Marysue Rucci Books for the digital ARC of Helen Phillips’s Hum. The book will be published on August 6!
Helen Phillips’s Hum is one of those books that crawls into the deepest parts of my brain—the niggling thoughts and fears that surface most often in the middle of the night—and just won’t leave. It’s speculative fiction set in the very near future, a novel that unearths the ugly threat of our pathways and habits. The setting is a city devastated by the climate crisis. May and her family—her husband Jem and children Lu and Sy—have struggled to survive on his gig work since May lost her tech job to hums, robots driven by the very AI she’d been training. Out of desperation, May signs up for adversarial tech surgery. These small modifications to her face will prevent her from being recognized by the technology that runs her city. The large payment she gets in exchange is meant to go to practical costs like rent and medical bills, and May does take care of some of those. But in a spontaneous (but not really) move, she also buys nonrefundable tickets for a family weekend at the Botanical Garden, the only place where they can access the type of nature that is now lost, the type of nature that surrounded May while she was growing up. Despite Jem’s misgivings, the family embarks on this trip within the city, with May determined to make the weekend a perfect oasis within the gritty darkness of their lives. This world is one where adults are always on their phones; where children’s lives are tracked and fueled by “bunnies,” wearable wrist technology; and where people spend much of their time within Wooms, immersive isolation pods in which occupants are completely surrounded by screens. But May wants to break these connections, insisting that they leave their phones and bunnies behind. Hum isn’t a comfortable book; there’s too much that’s recognizable, and I often felt deeply seen (and not in a good way), and every page of the book is thought provoking. But. It’s when May’s children go missing in the midst of the Botanical Garden, untrackable (no bunnies!), that the story really ramps up . . . as did my anxiety . . . even (especially!) when a Hum steps into help. Phillips, the author of The Need (another amazing book), is juggling so much here: Hum features deeply drawn characters and an incredibly compulsive plot alongside resonant questions about the path we’re all on and where it may be leading. I couldn’t look away, from the book or from what it reflected back at me. This will be one of my top books of the year.
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 Thanks to partners NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the digital ARC of Nicola Yoon's One of Our Kind. The book will be published on June 11!
Nicola Yoon’s One of Our Kind is quite a departure from her YA romance novels (which I unreservedly love!)—this is an adult suspense/thriller, a creepy headtrip that kept me on edge, my shoulders tense, for all 272 pages. Jasmyn Williams has some hesitations about her family’s move to Liberty, California, an all-Black community for the top echelon. But her husband, Kingston, is convinced that their family needs to make the move to secure a safe, bright future for their son Kamau and the baby they’ll have in a few, short months. Kingston’s life hinged on a tragedy—his brother’s fatal shooting by a police officer—that has shaped his outlook ever since. The couple has experienced racism as individuals and as a couple, so at first their experience in Liberty (while at terms unnerving) reinforces the joy of living in a place with all-Black police officers and teachers and store owners. But then Jasmyn begins to notice little things: her neighbors’ unwillingness to engage with the injustice still happening outside their community; Liberty’s commitment to straightened hair and European beauty standards; and the centrality of the spa whose self-care mantras turn Jasmyn off from the beginning. Liberty was founded by Carlton Way, King’s boss, so Jasmyn understands the need King feels to toe the line, to show that he’s bought in. But then he starts spending all of his spare time at the spa, giving up his previous dedication to mentoring at-risk youth in their old neighborhood to focus on self-care. Jasmyn also has a hard time finding people she really connects with, other than Keisha and Charles, kindred spirits, with whom she decides to start a Black Lives Matter chapter in Liberty. But they hit a wall, unable to recruit a single person to join them. And then Keisha and Charles start to change their opinions. I don’t want to give away anything else about the plot, which is both captivating and deeply disturbing. The book alternates straightforward narrative with news stories and case files, illuminating the history of Liberty and its residents, creating a structure that is deeply resonant. One of Our Kind brought to mind the film Get Out and Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé’s Ace of Spades, though those comps aren’t precise: this is the author’s unique response to American society, and it stands alone. It’s a powerful, thought-provoking work demonstrating that, regardless of genre, Nicola Yoon is a master.  Thanks to partners NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for the digital ARC of Sara Raasch and Beth Revis's Night of the Witch. The book will be published on October 3!
I absolutely loved Sara Raasch and Beth Revis's Night of the Witch, which uses a historical foundation to delve into the world of witches, witch hunts, and hexenjägers (hunters). The book opens in fourteenth century Germany with the decimation of Fritzi’s village as her mother, friends, and family are killed or imprisoned. Fritzi herself escapes after her mother hides her—against her will—in the basement, as Fritzi listens to the sounds of destruction and terror. When she realizes that her young cousin has been taken by Dieter Kirch, the head hunter, she vows to get her back, following the pack of hunters to the city that is their headquarters. Alternating chapters tell the story of Otto, a hunter who is Dieter’s second in command. Otto’s father was one of the earliest hunters, and his heritage has led him to the heights of the fervor. The hunters are plotting a spectacle, the burning of 100 witches, and Otto takes a small group out to arrest his sister, Hilde, to make her a part of the group. That’s where he meets Fritzi, who hears the ruckus and steps in to save Hilde. The writing and characterization here are gorgeous, and both Fritzi and Otto are nuanced figures who wrestle with their own responsibility in the face of their society’s manic attacks on anyone who lies outside the narrow path available to its citizens. Raasch and Revis raise questions about women’s power, about obligations to one’s community and the greater good, about the role of religion in morality. This is the first book in a series that I’ll definitely be continuing.  Thanks to partners NetGalley, Knopf Doubleday, and Pantheon Books for the digital ARC of Julia Glass’s Vigil Harbor in exchange for an honest review. The book is out today!
I’d read only one of Julia Glass’s prior novels—her debut Three Junes, winner of the National Book Award—when I requested an advance copy of Vigil Harbor. I was drawn in by the synopsis, focused on an isolated community in the midst of the consequences of climate change. Honestly, I didn’t give thought to much else, to plot or writing or even characters, but all of those facets of this novel exceeded my expectations. Vigil Harbor moves through a large cast of characters, shifting from one perspective to the next, as they consider the elements of their past that have led them to their current identities as individuals and as a community. Each character is precisely drawn as a unique individual inextricably woven into the lives of the others. Brecht, who dropped out of college after witnessing a horrific explosion in New York, lives with his best friend Noam in the home of Brecht’s mother and stepfather, Austin. Austin, an architect, works both to comfort his family and to wrestle with a tragic loss from his past. Mike is reeling from the end of his marriage. The list of characters spools out from there, all woven together by their mutual past and by a desire to escape something outside of Vigil Harbor. Tragedy pervades their stories, but so does hope, and there’s a whimsy, a touch of myth and story, that pushes this book out of the realm of the typical. This near-future book is rooted in the way that climate change plagues society through disasters both natural and man-made, and watching the way those disasters alternately push people apart and together again is a captivating process. I absolutely could not stop reading this book, which blends beautiful writing, compelling characters, and a propulsive plot. It’s a masterful work of fiction. |
AuthorI'm Jen Moyers, co-host of the Unabridged Podcast and an English teacher. Archives
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