Overgrowth subverts the classic 'alien invasion' trope by blowing the reader to see through the alien's POV. Something I always love about any sort of invasion / apocalyptic type novel is the examination of humanity in threat.
While I did enjoy the book it did read as more YA than adult despite the body horror elements. The pacing was also slightly slow at points and had me wondering when it would begin to pick up.
The commentary about the treatment of minorities was done with good intentions but could have been slightly more expanded upon.
Overall an enjoyable read, I'm looking forward to delving deeper into Mira Grant's previous novels and interested to see what she does next

“This is a story. It can’t hurt you anymore”

I went in thinking I was about to read one thing but of course with a Mira Grant book you should never assume you know anything about the story you are about to be told. This one stayed with me and it really took a while to get my thoughts together about this book, unlike some of her previous books this one wasn’t as visceral but I think that is why it stayed, I think like a vine it was slow to capture the reader but by the time you were finished you were well and truly entangled.

This is a story about Plant Aliens who want to invade our planet and at the same time it is so much more, it’s about the bonds we make or don’t with friends and family and about who will really stand by your side when the world is coming to an end.

I loved the views on nature vs nurture just how much of ourselves is about the way we live and who we surround ourselves with vs what flows through our DNA. I adored the idea of an alien or just a plain old human having to go through the motions of life with rent and a job and falling in love just like everyone else.

The imagery is immaculate, insidious and truly quietly terrifying. I absolutely would have touched the death flower: it just sounds too perfect not to want to at least see it up close and personal.

A huge thank you to Daphne Press for filling the Seanan / Mira hole in my heart

Firstly, thank you to NetGalley, Mira Grant, and Daphne Press for accepting my ARC request!

I was super excited about this book, and maybe that's why I ended up a tiny bit disappointed. I thought i was going to fall in love with it, and the expectations were just too high. The premise is amazing and right up my alley; i think it was the execution that left me a bit flat, personally. However, and since it's rated pretty high on StoryGraph, I do believe this book could be someone else's favorite if they like:

- Sci-fi with alien elements, or about alien planetary invasions.
- Themes of belonging and identity and nurture versus nature.
- Questioning the ethics of violence.
- Minor horror elements and some gore (not consistently throughout the whole book, just here and there in specific moments).
- Queer rep (specifically, trans rep).

These are all things I loved about this book, and they're primarily what made me pick it up in the first place. Nevertheless, I feel like I should share my honest feedback about other aspects I struggled a bit with:

- I would have liked for the worldbuilding to be a bit more developed (I also love infodummping/loredumping, so that would have been super cool as well).
- I didn't really connect with the characters, and by the second half of the book they still kept me guessing about their motives and what drove them to make the decisions they made.
- I would have liked it better if the relfections surrounding the main themes (belonging, identity...) were a bit deeper and less spoonfed to the reader. I felt like the inner monologue of the main character left no room for me to connecting the dots and arrive to my own conclusions, but it also didn't feel like it went super deep, either, so I was left kind of in the middle.
- The pacing felt weird, which is very easy to notice in longer books like this one. By the time I was halfway done I felt like not much had happened, and then towards the last 20% of the book, the pace picked up and felt a bit rushed. Again, this might be just me, but I've read a couple of reviews that also mentioned the pacing, and I mostly agree.

TLDR; I would recommend this book, even if it wasn't my favorite, because I still appreciate what I did enjoy about it, and I think it could be a new favorite for many people, especially sci-fi lovers.

Unsettling and beautiful !! At no point could I predict what was going to happen and I absolutely loved it. The world building was fascinating , I could’ve read another 500 pages of this happily

Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for approving me to read this book, I’m rating it 4.25-4.5 stars.

This was oddly thought provoking in a what would I do and who would I end up being in this scenario. It was horrifying and intriguing, the sort of body horror that occurs during this was something else. I haven’t read a sci-fi horror in a while, but I’m very glad I got to read this.

Highly recommend for a great sci-fi read with terrifying moments and moral dilemmas throughout. It taps into identity crisis and romance in some aspects.

I admit - aliens aren't my usual thing. But I love Mira Grant's writing style, so took a chance on this.

As always, she absolutely draws you in from the first. This is both an original story combined with the 'boy who cried wolf' and (yes, I'm saying it) Superman. Imagine if an alien grew up on earth, but spoke up about it? Of course they wouldn't be believed!

The pace does falter at times, and it was a bit frustrating to have to go through all the disbelief when we, the audience, know more of the truth. But as always, the skilful writing propelled the tale forward while evoking a great weird atmosphere.

Not my favourite of this author's works, but still an excellent read.

"I wasn't crazy. I wasn't a liar. I wasn't a human being. I was what I'd always claimed to be, and my people were coming to take me home, and maybe I should have been upset to realize I wasn't what I seemed to be, but I never asked to look human. I never asked to lie through the shape of my bones, when my voice only ever told the truth."
4.25 ☆|5

When diving into this book, I wasn't expecting to love it that much. But also, I wasn't expecting the story to go like that. And yet, it ended up being incredibly nice and compelling to read, and this probably made it on my list of "I don't like horror very much but this was some really good stuff".

Stasia has always been honest with who she was. Since she was three years old, she has been telling everyone that she wasn't human: she was an alien from outer space, and her people were gonna come and get her back. No one was willing to listen. And yet, one day, the invasion comes.

As someone who deeply loves science fiction and media even loosely related to space, I ended up being delighted by this plot. The aliens were really interesting, and I adored all the aspects related to them and especially the way Stasia was able to communicate with her people! It was truly fascinating. Also, alien plants? I was mostly sold when I saw those words. I also really liked the writing and the characters.

Even though I liked it a lot, I still have some issues with this book. First of all, that pacing was not it. It was inconsistent and part of why it took me so long to end this book. The greatness of the story compensates for it to my eyes, but it was annoying at times, especially in the middle of the book, as it was slower. Secondly, Graham, the love interest, was a trans man. That was a nice touch, but unfortunately, I could just feel that the author was not a trans person. Some trans analogies were...certainly a choice, but nothing that I judged too bad or weird, so there is that.

Other than those minor points, this was a really great read, and I'm glad that I got to discover and enjoy it! I would like to thank Daphne Press and Netgalley for sending me this e-ARC. This one goes out on May 6th!

Oh I adored this. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC!

Overgrowth scratches a lot of the same itch that Seth Dickenson's Exordia scratched for me, and while I would recommend this to anyone who liked Exorida, I would particularly recommend it to anyone who wanted to like Exordia but got turned off by just how hard the sci-fi of that book was. This has plenty of the alien invasion mystery, body horror, and political machinations, but it is significantly easier to follow than Exordia. Fundamentally, Overgrowth made me want to reread Exordia, but then I would have to reread Exordia, and I refuse to read that book on my phone again.

Anyway, this review is allegedly about Overgrowth (2025) by Mira Grant.

I loved Stasia as a main character. She hit a good balance of being strong without being obnoxiously overconfident (considering that fundamentally she is just some guy before the alien shit starts up). Her turmoil over the invasion felt very real and well explored. I spent most of the book being unsure exactly what she would do regarding the alien invasion, but it wasn't annoying, because there legitimately was a lot to think about for her!

The side cast was really excellent too. It's a pretty large cast of characters, and Grant does a fantastic job of making sure everyone gets their moment (except for David, David kinda falls by the wayside, and this does make his -- I hesitate to call it culmination of his arc, because that would imply that he particularly had a character arc that the reader got to see -- ending a bit less impactful than I think it's meant to be). My favorite was Graham (natch, love a trans man); I loved how his transness was a bit of a foil to what Stasia experienced. I'm a little frightened by how down bad he was for Stasia, but I don't think I've ever been that in love before, so who's to say.

The body horror/alien stuff was great. I sometimes wish the body horror had been a little gnarlier, but I am a freak. I won't get into it too deeply because I don't want to have to spoiler this review, but the aliens, once they do properly arrive, are SO cool and chilling.

Thematically, the book is solid, if a bit unsubtle. As a US citizen who has the slightest bit of empathy for people who do not look and think exactly like me, the stuff about citizenship and scapegoating rang particularly true. I think Grant could have been a little subtler with the parallels to real life, but it doesn't drag down the book. I also appreciated the moral ambiguity around the aliens; they felt properly, well, alien. SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING [You know you've got a good invasion story when you hear from the aliens why they're invading, and you think "oh the main characters are NOT going to be able to talk them out of this without one hell of a fight or an incredibly unsatisfying deus ex machina". Fortunately, there was no deus ex machina].

Any complaints? Especially towards the beginning of the book, bits of recontextualizing information would just get thrown in there in a way that felt choppy to no end. The two examples I can think of off the top of my head are about Stasia having been in the tabloids and Graham being a serious romantic partner. It stopped becoming a problem later in the book, but it made the beginning feel like it could have used another editing pass.

Overall, great read, and I will definitely be looking into Mira Grant's backlog and future writing.

DNF at 30% - omg how did this happen? Why did I not enjoy a Mira Grant book, and did not even have the energy to finish it? I absolutely love her other work and this one an alien invasion story sounded amazing.
We follow Anastasia and the opening chapter is strong: It tells you no worries I am going to tell you a little story and there is nothing you can do about it but a little girl dies. A little girl called Anastasia gets killed by an alien plant and is being replaced with a "plant copy" Anastasia. This Anastasia (out main character) tells everyone, whether they are interested or not that she is an alien. No one cared to believe her, many wanted to institutionalize her. And guess what in the end it is true. The aliens are coming to harvest humanity. And Anastasia is reflecting how much she wants to go home, or if our planet is home. Why didnt it work for me? Normally I like an alien perspective on humans but this one was not in a funny way but in a more true dark and sombre way. While scarily accurate I just couldnt go through the emotions of humanity being its worst. The house cat Seymour (Little Shop of Horror reference) was gold though!

In this sci-fi book (I would not categorize it under horror, to avoid being underwhelmed by the horror elements) we follow Stasia, a woman who has been telling everyone ever since she was three years old that she is an alien - or, rather, an vanguard of an alien invasion. No one really believes her, because that's crazy... until a message from the mothership strikes the Earth . There will actually be an alien invasion, and it will not be peaceful.

What I really enjoyed about this book is that it explores themes of belonging, as Stasia is thorn between the loyalty to her species and to those who raised her. Yes, she is an alien, but she was also raised human, so she is a person. As she struggles to find her place between these identities, so do we. And I admit that, just like some characters, I was struggling too: it's hard to understand and empatize with someone who is about to tear apart the world as we know it, but it's also feasible. And I would argue that sometimes it's necessary to avoid useless massacres, especially because humans are notorious for their brutal nature through history.

This book challenges the reader, who is on one hand loving and understanding toward Stasia and her struggles, and is on the other devastated by the implications of the invasion. Especially because we, as humans, are used to being on the "top of the chain", we benefit from the exploitation of others (people, but also animals)... and suddenly we are faced with the other side of the coin. I truly appreciated this perspective.

However, what I loved the most were... well, the actual aliens . I loved hearing about their stories, their perspectives, their unique features. I would die to read a book about their history, as sad as it might be. All the worlds they grew up into, all the things they've learnt- it would be fascinating. Here's to hoping.

There were just a few things that didn't sit right with me, so I will mention them, though they did not in any way ruin this book for me and I doubt they will do it for other readers.

First, the pacing was a bit all over the place, while the first and last 20% of the book were a bit faster paced, the middle part was very slow and a bit too repetitive for my liking. I think that it could have been shorter. Second, the characters were not consisent. I really didn't understand why they acted the way they acted (save for Stasia and Graham). But this book was about Stasia, so not a big deal overall. Finally, though I appreciate the discourse on gender identity and I agree wholeheartedly, it was a bit too heavy-handed. I prefer when the points are suggested to rather than hammered into the reader.

That said, a great book that I would definitely suggest to anyone who reads sci-fi to explore human nature from a different perspective. Actually, you don't even need to read sci-fi to enjoy this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a copy of the EArc in exchange for an honest review

DNF at 53% I wanted to love this book so much, the premise and the beginning was truly creepy and felt unique, however any feel of suspense disspated with the author's constant need for going off topic.
The main character is an alien and as such tries to understand the world around her and she often deals with the concept of belonging somewhere. This could have worked were it not for the MC needing to discuss her thoughts at all times and without regard whether the scene needs it.

I will give 2 examples:
- MC and her boyfriend have to dress a little bit more officially as they try to appear professional. The bf wears jeans and the MC remarks that he looks good (OK) then goes on talking about the fact that he can wear jeans but she wouldn't be able to because of society expectations for women etc. (why do we need to make a scene that should be one sentence into a whole discussion?)
- in a rather tense moment, characters go through TSA check while trying to get back home (which is also a problem in itself as they were already stopped once at the airport and for the life of mine I can't think why they thought they won't encounter any issues again). We, as readers should feel that this moment is tense, the MC is accompanied by more characters that are related to the supposed alien invasion, we are holding our breath, waiting to see if they will make it or not. And then, one of the characters that appears Asian encounters an issue that is quickly resolved by another character being a white woman and lending "credibility" to the guy. In that moment we stop with the interrogation and we have a full page talking about how the guy was treated based on his race and then on a lenghty lecture how the woman saving him was discriminated as well because the TSA leant into society's expectations of women and how both characters were mistreated in different ways. The tension from the scene? Gone. Instead we have a lengthy discussion about societal issues.

Those are only 2 examples but it happens all the time. Sometimes it's one sentence, sometimes it's more but almost always it takes the attention from a given scene. And again, I understand the importance of discussion around those topics but I do not feel like the book did it in a right way. It almost feels like two different books and I do not understand how the story would benefit from those passages. They do not sound organic and often do not work in the context of a scene. And this could have been done better because the author presents us with a character that also has a lot of social commentary but in his case it feels right.
Graham, the MC's boyfriend is trans and I feel like his observations and him trying to understand the whole situation were done so much better. I could read a whole book from his POV because the way he acts and the journey he's on (realizing that his gf is in fact an alien, struggle with trust etc.) are much more convincing and honestly, had me invested. He makes the story interesting while also provoking the reader to think about some specific aspects of society.

Additionally, MC often thinks back on her time when she "woke up" and became Stasia. Stasia is a little girl whose body MC took over. And again, it makes for a convincing plot point and poses interesting question of the MC's right to live. The dilemma of being fine with who you are with knowing how you got there felt absolutely unique. However, MC makes the same points over and over again. This topic comes up often but always in the same way and with the exact same conclusions.

At 53% I decided that this book doesn't make me want to continue, the sci-fi aspects were what hooked me in but the MC turned me away. This could have been such a good story that was not only scary but also invited discussion on one's right to belon, alas it was buried under uneven pacing, tedious MC and the cast of characters that did not feel distinct enough to make me want to spend more time with them (except for Graham, he could have taken Seymour, the cat and run off to a different book and I WOULD FOLLOW)

Thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC!

I think this book was a very interesting take and reflection on what would happen to the earth in this alien takeover of earth. I really enjoyed the premise and ideas of the aliens and their method of takeover, but I think the balance of plot points was a bit off for me. I got really hooked in the beginning for about 20%, then the middle 60% was a bit slow, then the last 20% was interesting and has me hooked. I’m excited to discover some more books from Mira Grant though!

I first came across this book when I saw that illumicrate was doing it as their Starbright box for May '25.

I usually way more more into fantasy than I ever would be sci-fi but it was the cover that pulled my attention first. The colours on it are so eye catching and I honestly thought the art work was gorgeous.

Having read the books description, I actually got really excited about it and was so delighted when I then got to review it on Netgalley.

I can honestly saw I thought this was a great read. I've bogged myself down too much lately on reading the same fae stories with essentially different names and Overgrowth was a well needed welcomed change!

Elements of it did remind me of slightly of Stephanie Myers Hosts but this was much better in my opinion. It was darker at times with a more modern take on the concept of body-snatching, what it means to be an outsider and to be accepted. The diversity used to portray this in the book made it realatble to anyone in life being male/female/a part of the LGBTQ+ community or someone from a different race/ethnicity.

I found Overgrowth to be a fresh and interesting take on the alien invasion story. While not hard sci-fi, it was a fun 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' style story, with lots of references to 'Little Shop of Horrors'. I loved the themes throughout of identify and belonging, although sometimes the point was laboured. The story generally had enough to keep the reader engaged, although I found the middle to be a little slow until the action kicked in again.
Overall an enjoyable light bit of sci-fi.

I read an ARC courtesy of NetGalley.

Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant is a hit-and-miss author for me, and this one is a miss. I'm really sorry about that, because I absolutely loved the premise, and Grant has this very breezy, compulsively readable style. I even like where the story ends up, which I think may not be everyone's cup of tea. But I just found the characterisation and ethics utterly unintelligible.

The characters don't make sense to me. They are always reacting to the exact thing that's happening to them, with very little overall motivation or, I don't know, system of values. If this was a system of values that differed from mine, I could disagree with it. If it was the system of values of an alien, I could find it interesting. But it honestly feels like everyone is paper-thin and just doing whatever gives us a chance for a quippy dialogue.

This follows very closely the beats and characters of Parasite, which was my other least favorite Grant (for somewhat similar reasons).

(I also found the parallels about transness and immigrants to be extremely obvious and not very well thought-through.)

I would like to thank the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and honestly review an advanced reader’s copy of this book.

I felt on the fence about Overgrowth; I love sci fi but am terrible with horror. I hadn’t read anything by this author before, so I went in with low expectations.

Thankfully, Overgrowth is fantastic. The premise of a little girl getting consumed by a plant from space and it flowering into an exact, alien copy of her, compelled to warn everyone around her that she’s the vanguard of an alien invading species? It’s fantastically weird.

I really enjoyed the supporting cast; the trans male lover interest was very well done and he was fantastic the entire way through as he grappled with his morality around the invasion. (Not to mention that ending…)

Overall, Overgrowth is brilliant sci fi; very well written and a five star experience!

Before we talk about anything regarding the book itself, I want to address the major factor that contributed to my disappointment: the marketing. Whoever approved the tagline “Annihilation meets The Day of the Triffids in this full-on body horror/alien invasion apocalypse”, or recommended McGuire to publish this under her horror-pseudonym Mira Grant, created some expectations that this book simply isn’t going to meet. So if you take anything from this review, let it be a little expectation-management:

1. This is not “Annihilation meets Day of the Triffids”. It’s closer to “Little Shop of Horrors/Rocky Horror Show meets Independence Day”
2. It’s also not “full-on body-horror”, and a far cry from her previous books published under the Mira Grant-lable. It’s more so a mix of light horror, YA-feeling-action-adventure, and a hint of cozy sci-fi. More on that in the Bad-section.
3. The main cast feel a lot like teenagers, so I feel this might’ve worked better (reworked) as a YA-novel, than marketed towards adults.

With that being said, let’s get into the review-proper, as I have a lot of thoughts.

The Good
Our story opens with 3-year-old Anastacia Miller, curiously exploring the woods just out of sight from her parents. She comes across a strange looking alien flower, and is brutally devoured by it. (Leave it to Grant to open a story, right?!)
Shortly later, Anastacia walks out of the woods and into the arms of her mother. Except, this is not the original Anastacia, but an alien copy. It’s this “Stacia” we follow into adulthood; a plant-alien in the body of a woman, living among the humans. Stacia never makes a secret of her alien-nature, introducing herself as such and warning humanity about the impending invasion that her species have planned. People just laugh and dismiss it as a quirky joke. Until the invasion begins… Now Stacia must reckon with the dilemma of where her alliances truly lie, and who she ultimately choses to be “her people”.
The story explores themes of found-family, crafting your own identity, and finding your place when you ultimately feel like a misfit most of the time. On the surface I love this idea, and at times the coziness of the friendships and relationships really steal the show. For the majority of the time though, the good was overshadowed by some glaring problems.


The Bad
As I read more of McGuires books, I’m learning that I enjoy her concepts a lot more than the way she executes them. In the case of Overgrowth, my major problem was with how unbalanced it feels in both tone and pacing.
As mentioned, the book opens with a fairly harrowing scene of child-death, before eventually frolicking off into a quirky/cozy Little-Shop-of-Horrors-style found-family story, with some absurdist jokes and pop-culture references. It’s such a tonal mismatch to the opening, as well as some of the themes it covers, that it gave me whiplash.
Then there’s the pacing, which is absolutely glacial at first, before rushing the ending. The actual alien invasion happens around the 65%-mark of the book, and the build-up is a repetition of the same events over and over again. A little before that 65%-mark, one of the characters utters this brilliantly ironic quote that I highlighted: “This is a lot of prologue. I’d like the text please.”
I genuinely don’t know if this was intentional, but she just voiced my exact thoughts on the book at that moment.
I can easily put up with a slower story, if the characters and/or world are enough to carry it though. No such luck here. Our main cast is supposed to be in their early 30’s, but read like teenagers. Our protagonist’s boyfriend and best friend also felt far too much like “stereotypical-perfect-friend” inserts, rather than actual characters, for me to truly care about them. There’s even more to be said about Graham, but that brings us into the Ugly section…

The Ugly
McGuires books have always been heavy on their messaging about diversity and society’s treatment of minorities. It’s because I support those messages, that I’m extra critical on the way they are portrayed, and I feel like McGuires strikes a rare miss here. I’ve struggled with her lack of subtlety before, but Overgrowth takes the cake and beats you over the head with it for good measure. The key to messaging in fiction, is to weave your point organically into the story, and to trust it to click with your reader. Not to interrupt the story, just so you can get on a soapbox and tell the reader what you want them to take away.
Overgrowth wears its themes on its sleeve: the aliens as a metaphor for the “othering” of minorities, underlined for emphasis by the parallels being drawn to Stacia’s trans-boyfriend Graham. It was all laid on só thickly that it takes you straight out of the story. A perfect example happens in a scene near the ending. Slight spoilers:

During the climax of the story, our protagonist is flying through the sky on the back of what’s basically an “alien-dragon”, whilst chasing a plane that has her captured friends in it. During this scene, in the midst of this high-stakes aerial plane-chase, she literally asks the dragon “what are your pronouns”. It was só jarring, that had it not happened at 94% through the e-book, I’d have DNF-ed it right there and then.

Worse than the lack of subtlety is the actual alien-metaphor itself, which has quite a few sharp edges when you think of it. Using friendly-plant-aliens as a metaphor for the societal mistreatment of minorities can absolutely work. Even a darker ending where the aliens turn murderous to take revenge on humanity for their mistreatment can work. Here however, the aliens are clearly established as a threat to humanity from the start; they are predators at heart with the ultimate goal of conquering. The book literally opens with the slaughter of a 3-year-old kid by one of them! Maybe I’m being too sensitive, but bringing actual child-predators anywhere close to a message about trans-folks seems wildly unproductive to me… I genuinely believe McGuire’s heart is in the right place here, but this metaphor can be misconstrued so easily that I don’t want to touch it with a ten-foot pole…

Thanks to Daphne Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Ah, I loved Mira Grant's Into The Drowning Deep, Rolling In The Deep, and all of her Newsflesh universe, but I did not like this. Indeed, I liked it even less than the Parasitology trilogy, which I could not finish (stalled on book two). Overgrowth is narrated from the point of view of Stasia Miller, who is part of the vanguard of an invading alien plant species who are planning to destroy Earth and all its inhabitants. The original Stasia was devoured when she was three years old and replaced by this replica, who has now grown to adulthood in rural Washington State and Seattle. But although Stasia has always been honest with the humans in her life about her alien nature, the invasion just doesn't seem to be turning up. She's now in her thirties and living an antisocial existence as a customer service assistant, socialising only with her housemates and her boyfriend. When an alien signal finally summons Stasia to 'sprout', she has to figure out where her loyalties lie.

I'm not sure I ever quite got what Grant was trying to do with this one, unless it was just one big unsubtle allegory for climate change in the vein of Don't Look Up (if so, I'm not on board). I enjoyed the quirky opening but as soon as the invasion becomes a serious threat, so does Stasia, and that's where the book went off the rails for me. It's seriously grim material but it preserves some of the same ironic tone and we still seem to be expected to root (ha) for Stasia. But I spent the whole book wondering why on earth her friends and lover don't just run a mile when they realise what she's been telling them is true, and how we're meant to be on her side when she is a colonising, violent invader. I wasn't happy with being constantly told by this character that humanity sucks; yes, some humans do terrible things, but that is not your judgment call to make, as you literally plan to exterminate them. She gets really unhappy when she's held against her will by NASA and subjected to minor medical experiments, but what did she expect? Her species is multiply xenocidal, and their excuse is that if they try to invade and then don't kill off everybody on a planet, they tend to face retribution. I mean... yes?

Another way to read Overgrowth, I suppose, is as a character study of Stasia's divided loyalties, but this reading didn't land with me either. In the end, Grant makes it far too easy for Stasia to make her choices, and her character development is conditioned by external forces rather than taking place internally. The book this ended up reminding me of most vividly was Stephenie Meyer's The Host, which also features xenocidal aliens and some weirdly acquiescent humans, but I'm pretty sure this wasn't what Grant was going for. Such a shame, as I would still recommend most of Grant's novels without hesitation (and this one has such a fabulous UK cover). This may appeal more to Parasitology fans, as I had some of the same problems with that trilogy, though on a much lesser scale.

If your expecting for this book to have a lot of action where lots and lots of things happen from the beginning the way apocalyptic movies are like, I'd say to drop that expectation like right now. Mostly because this starts off with an understanding into who our main character is. Her history, her family, the people that matters to her. Then it ramps up, and gets REALLY INTERESTING. The start is slow though. Also another thing I would have loved to know is this has long chapters within each sections that are broken up by numbers.

As for the story, I think this has such a unique premise and execution was fairly well done as well. I did end up loving the side characters but I couldn't get into the main character, which makes sense! The aliens were cool, albeit weird. It's fairly easy to wrap your head around the aliens and how they actually are!

At its core though, I saw the way this book explored the themes of belonging, authenticity and exclusion in a way that interesting and compelling.

This was such a good read! I love how it’s split into 5 sections - Seed, Root, Stem Flower, and Harvest which was a very clever way to chronicle the stages of Anastasia’s life before and during the invasion.

On the surface this was a story about an alien invasion but underneath there was this thought provoking theme that kept challenging what is means to be human and how the main character tries to navigate her inner conflict because she’s not sure whether her allegiances should be with her human friends, who have shown her nothing but love (as opposed to the people who have demonstrated how horrid humans can be) or with her biological family who are only interested in taking over.

I could also see the parallels between how humans treat other humans they believe are different, to the point they don’t see them as human and that was quite unsettling.

But overall I really enjoyed this and the last chapter becomes clearer when you go back and read chapter one again!