Thanks Atlantic Books and NetGalley for my advanced reader copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.

Actual rating: 3.75 stars.

When May loses her job to AI and struggles to find another, she becomes a guinea pig in a new experimental procedure, altering her face so it cannot be recognised by the surveillance that is now rampant. In turn, she is paid handsomely and can secure her family's future for another few months. May lives in a city that's been transformed by climate change and now shares its population with robots called 'hums'. The hums dispense pharmacy prescriptions, track your whereabouts, advertise to you every 15 minutes according to your surveilled condition, and far more.

Fraught with anxiety and stress, May splurges some of her newly earned cash on prestigious passes to the Botanical Garden: a rare, green refuge where forests, animals, streams and nature still flourish. Hardened by her family addiction to their devices, she decides to take her husband, daughter and son to the Garden without their devices, a decision that proves far riskier than anticipated. And, when her children come under threat thanks to her rash actions, May must put her trust in a hum.

I really enjoyed this speculative fiction from Phillips. AI and climate change are subjects I am incredibly interested in and passionate about, and they serve as a great backdrop to this story about motherhood, humanity, society and marriage. The distant-future dystopia felt dizzyingly real, and there's some excellent topics at play here. We must interrogate what happens when AI, climate change, tribalism and egocentricity are left to their own devices.

I read this book in days and thoroughly enjoyed it – I enjoyed the urgent prose that pulls you into May's mind and the childlike innocence of that of May's children. Somehow, it worked that you never learn much about her husband. I do wish there was a little more depth to the characters, and perhaps more world-building about life outside of the family's world. Perhaps that would've lifted this to a 4-star read.