You Weren't Meant To Be Human

De: Andrew Joseph White

Narrado por: Max Meyers

Alien meets Midsommar in this chilling debut adult novel from award-winning author Andrew Joseph White about identity, survival, and transformation amidst an alien invasion in rural West Virginia.

Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse.

Crane is grateful. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost—Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is a deeply personal horror; a visceral statement about the lives of marginalized people in a hostile world, echoing the works of Stephen Graham Jones and Eric LaRocca.

Ugly crying

Reviewing RIGHT after finishing it and the thing that sticks with me is two things in the marketing that did a great disservice:
Offering it as “Alien meets Midsommar” was not at all accurate. If anything I’d call it closer to a mashup of Incision/Juno/Slither.
Secondly that by a lot of the blurbs I thought it would be more of a sprawling road trip movie like Plan B (2021). It was not.
Most importantly however, it was utterly devastating. I had snot and heavy breathing by the end.
It’s a fever dream of a not so distant future, both disgusting and sexy, sometimes jarring between the two fast enough to give whiplash and leave you to deal with the aftermath on your own.
And for a book about so desperately wanting an abortion it ended up such a touching, deeply heartbreaking devotional to what parental love truly can be in its most extreme form. And I mean stomach turning, audible sobbing in the living room at 2 AM extreme.
It’s so grotesquely beautiful and I feel like I’ll definitely do a reread more than once.

Brutal in the best way

Hard hitting, dark, honest, and sucked me in fully like all the other AJW books have done!

Same dish

I love the gore and pain Andrew creates, but I can only handle so much “I’m autistic and gay and no one understands me” before it feels old and over done

Worms are squishy and gross

This book is so gross and twisted, with characters who are severely messed up but still somehow relatable. I love AJW's writing and this just continued the trend. Keep in mind this is a horror novel for adults with very dark and grotesque content.

intense but excellent

this book was very intense to listen to but it is astonishingly good. I didn't know what to expect going in and I now don't really know how to explain it to people without just kind of telling them the whole story lol

A great listen-gut wrenching. Great for Splatterpunk genre lovers.

This book was something …
I enjoyed the fact that it was set in a mostly normal world .. this could have been happening concurrently with our timeline. The main character will break your heart -the story will break your soul. Cautionary: This book is NOT for those sensitive to sexual violence or gore. Overall a great listen. The narrator was great in my opinion.

Love the story annoyed with the narrator at times

I can’t stand how the narrator whispers and then screams. I have to turn it all the way up to understand the majority of it and then my eardrums get blown out when they scream or the worms talk. It’s sad because I absolutely love this story. I do think this got better as the story went on.

rip my heart out

This was absolutely incredible. This got to me in so many ways. Visceral. Beautiful. Haunting. MAX, oh my god your performance. So, so good.

Incredible narration!

Story was great. Author did a great job at telling a horrific story. The narrator was absolutely brilliant. Made it so visceral.

Saddest, most messed up story ever

There is no sympathetic character to cheer for. They are all bad people self absorbed by their own inner narrative. For some reason the horror is as compelling as it is sickening. Its like going down a tunnel of horrors and just when you're barely able to see the light and have a glimmer of hope someone slams you over the head with a shovel and drags you back in. MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY.