Review by lakenisreading - Overgrowth

lakenisreading 's review for:

Overgrowth by Mira Grant

2.0

dark lighthearted mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Three-year-old Anastasia is playing in the front yard with her toys until she is lured into the woods and encounters an unusual plant. What walks out of the woods is not the real Anastasia but an alien copy of her. Alien Stasia grows up and leads a fairly normal life, except that she tells everyone she is an alien and that her kind will be coming back someday. Nobody takes this claim seriously, and Stasia even begins to doubt this herself, until an alien communication is received announcing the upcoming invasion.

From this premise, you’d think the tone would remain dark and creepy, maybe even sad. But the rest of the book never quite lived up to this promise. Instead, it focused largely on Stasia’s relationships with her friends and boyfriend, which gave a little bit of cozy found family vibes. I don’t typically enjoy cozy sci-fi, but I think I would’ve liked that aspect of the story more if the vibe shift wasn’t so abrupt and confusing.

I appreciated the trans representation in Stasia’s boyfriend, Graham. However, in almost every scene, Graham seemed to be holding back some doubts or feelings about his alien girlfriend. This made me expect some sort of conflict in Graham and Stasia’s relationship that never bubbled to the top, which felt almost like Graham was silenced for the sake of making him be 100% wholesome and the perfectly understanding boyfriend. For as great of a relationship as Stasia claimed they had, it didn’t make sense that they didn’t have a deep conversation discussing Graham’s feelings about having a partner that is one of the aliens attempting to brutally colonize his planet.*

This brings me to another point that bothered me a bit… There are many instances in which the government and society’s treatment of Stasia as an alien is very clearly analogized to the treatment of trans people, POC, and immigrants. I think I understand and appreciate what the author was attempting to do here. I’m just not sure the analogies work because, unlike marginalized people, Stasia IS a threat. Stasia exists only because of the gruesome murder of a three-year-old girl, and the aliens are colonizers invading to harm humanity. The book seems to preach that government and society are the bad guys, but am I crazy to think it is reasonable for the government here to try to protect its own people? It’s okay for society to view Stasia and the aliens as a threat because the aliens announced that they DO NOT COME IN PEACE. Others may not take the analogies as far as I did, but my brain can’t help but follow them to their logical conclusions. I think it’s a bit dangerous to be making the comparison between truly hostile aliens and marginalized people—even if, as in the case of Stasia comparing herself to Graham, the comparison is being made by the unreliable narrator herself.**

I do think there was potential here—particularly with the strong start. However, the inconsistencies in tone and messaging prevented me from fully enjoying this read.

Overgrowth is a standalone sci-fi novel set to publish on May 6, 2025.

ALC provided by NetGalley and Macmillan Audio in exchange for an honest review.

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*POTENTIAL SPOILER:

After finishing the book, I understand why that didn’t happen. However, I don’t think the ending really satisfied that void for me.

**I recognize that Stasia does have a throwaway line about how society treats Graham worse than her—but I’d argue the comparison was already made, and simply saying “oh but he has it a bit worse than me” doesn’t undo the fact that the comparison has been made at all.

Content Warnings