Weekly Read: Thrum by Meg Smitherman

If you’ve been following my blog, you know I’ve had a hard time finding good sci-fi romance novellas lately. Why did I go through so many DNF’s when I had Meg Smitherman’s Thrum waiting in the wings, and I knew it would be good?

To be honest, I was kinda scared to start it. The genre is “horromance,” a combo of horror and romance, and the horror part had me worried this book was going to give me nightmares.

Quotes from novels like Pet Motel* have come through my insta feed every so often and totally traumatize me, and when I heard the word “horromance” and that this book contained “body horror,” that’s what came to mind.

But you guys, my preconceptions about this book were so wrong.

Thrum opens as protagonist Ami wakes from cryo sleep to find that her crewmates have died in stasis. Worse, her ship’s comms unit and fuel supply have been sabotaged. She’s stranded in deep space, friendless and terrified, and worse… possibly not alone.

Ami manages to fix her comms unit enough to send out a localized distress signal, and an alien ship answers her call. The ship’s lone inhabitant learns English in a matter of seconds and invites Ami aboard.

With no one else to turn to, Ami agrees. She’s shocked to find that the alien being who lives there has taken the form of her favourite novel character, Dorian Gray, complete with cravat and tailcoat and immortally beautiful features. Though she knows Dorian is not what he seems, she can’t deny her attraction.

Dorian’s ship is another story. It looks like a bland, cookie-cutter human vessel, but Ami knows this appearance can’t be real. Dorian explains that the ship is altering Ami’s perception so that her human mind is not overwhelmed by its true nature.

But as Ami stays on the ship working to fix her comms unit, the strange vessel becomes more and more terrifying. It’s a labyrinth that not only alters its appearance, but also her perception of space and time. And coming from deep withing the ship, there’s a constant thrum, a mind-enveloping vibration that both calls to Ami and repulses her.

Dorian is Ami’s one saving grace as she exists in a state of constant terror and sleep deprivation working to repair her comms. His presence allows her moments of comfort and sanity, and Ami can’t resist his all-too-human appearance and their undeniable chemistry.

But is the comfort Dorain provides real, or just another mindf*ck, like the ships ever-changing corridors?

While the sex scenes are brief and not descriptive, this book has an undeniably erotic vibe. It has the feel of a vampire romance, with a naive girl trapped in a hot immortal’s castle. She’s drawn to his beauty. But does he want to f*ck her? Or eat her?

Or maybe both?

It’s definitely not the kind of dynamic that would be healthy in a real-life relationship. Ami’s sanity is questionable, and the power dynamic is off. So even though she’s into Dorian, there’s an element of questionable consent. But on the other hand, it’s fiction. And for those of us who grew up with Beauty and the Beast, we were kind of doomed to adore this stuff.

I wouldn’t recommend reading this if you’re prone to unhealthy real-life relationships or recovering from one, though. I’d also add a trigger warning for mild body horror. It’s got an element of Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box” for sure, portraying organs and entrails as ambiguously repulsive and erotic.

If that’s not your jam, this is not your book.

But it’s also not even close to as scary as I worried it would be. There’s no rape. There’s no demeaning or threatening dialogue. There are no excessively gruesome horror elements. As someone who hasn’t been able to watch shows like The Walking Dead since having kids, I was not only able to stomach this novel, but I actually adored it.

If it’s just the term “horromance” that’s keeping you from picking up this novella like it was for me, I highly recommend giving it a shot. Meg Smitherman’s Thrum has turned out to be my favourite novella of 2024. And if this is an accurate example of horromance, it might become my favourite sub-genre.

I’m kinda wondering, too if my upcoming debut A Symphony of Starlight has more horror elements to it than I realized. I have a whole sequence of scenes that remind me a lot of this book. Scenes where the main character doesn’t know if what she’s seeing is real, and what she’s seeing is low-grade horrific.

All in all, I wish I’d given this book and this sub-genre a chance sooner.

I’ll definitely be reading the author’s next work, Swallowed, in which a botanist is trapped in a jungle with a hot commando dude, and the plants produce aphrodisiac pollen.

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*no judgment on this book or author. I haven’t read it. However, the quotes that have come through my feed from this novel and others labelled as “body horror” and “horror romance” have been degrading quotes that appear to be depicting situations like a male character threatening a female character after r@ping her. Maybe they only appear that way out of context, maybe in context it’s actually consensual and the characters are just acting out fantasies.

All I’m saying is, this book is not that.