Vivid, visceral horror story resonates

Andrew Joseph White’s new horror novel isn’t for the faint of heart.

It opens with the main character, Crane, a non-verbal autistic trans man, being violently sexually assaulted by Levi, a dishonourably discharged soldier. Worse, it’s nothing new for their relationship.

As if that weren’t horrifying enough, the sentient worms they’ve surrendered control of their lives to want a baby to serve as a human host. And Crane is pregnant.

It’s not just worms — the “hive” is a collective of tiny insects and invertebrates operating cult-like human groups throughout America, and anyone who strays is brutally dealt with by enforcers like Levi. Crane’s attempt to transition after high school led him straight into the clutches of the hive in West Virginia, where he lives cut off from family and most friends.

As a trans man on the autism spectrum, White writes from a position of lived experience.

He previously explored similar themes in his award-nominated YA novels: Hell Followed With Us had the main character trying to escape a cult; The Spirit Bares Its Teeth featured an autistic protagonist; and in Compound Fracture the lead teen comes out as trans to his West Virginia parents.

In his first novel for adults, White issues content warnings up front and then lets loose with vivid, visceral body horror, interwoven on multiple levels.

Crane struggles with self-harm ideation and wants to destroy his own face. His acute sensorineural awareness gives added weight not only to his aversion to wrong-consistency pizza sauce or the sharp consonants in the word “pregnant,” but also to his disgust at worms and bugs crawling beneath the skin of the mute enforcer sent after him when he seeks help from friends living near Washington, D.C.

Add to that a whole slew of new physical problems, as well as anxieties, from his new condition. Is the fetus fully human? What will the hive do with it — or to Crane, if he tries to terminate the pregnancy?

Crane’s attitudes and thoughts infuse the narrative, to sharp effect. When he’s helping new recruit Jess finish killing her ex, who held her captive, she balks and says she can’t. “The f— is she talking about. She can’t? The hive chose her for a reason. The flies wouldn’t have crawled into this room as a horrible shimmering mass and coated the walls and buzzed in a disgusting cacophony if they didn’t want her.”

Crane’s many-layered revulsions and challenges don’t prevent him from showing snark and sarcasm without an audible voice. When using his phone to type a message to Jess that the hive will kill her if she deserts, his expression is barbed: “Do you understand what you’ve agreed to? Was the swarm unclear, was the bite on your wrist not enough to drive the point home?”

Despite his marginalizations, growing dilemma and increased dependency on the abusive Levi, Crane has one advantage: everybody underestimates him. And when his opportunity comes, he surprises even himself. (Another warning: Crane’s solution to the Gordian Knot of his life also isn’t for the faint of heart.)

You Weren’t Meant to be Human is a horrifying, compelling tour de force that will stay with the reader long after the buzzing flies stop whispering.

David Jón Fuller is a Winnipeg writer and editor. His debut novel, Venue 13, is forthcoming in 2026 from Turnstone Press.