HIGHLIGHTS
~when they come for you, bite a chunk out of their arm
~stick together or they’ll break you
~that is not science
~pay real close attention to your nightmares
~the real monsters are, as usual, not the actual monsters

I’m really not kidding when I say Felker-Martin’s books don’t need trigger warnings, because her name on the cover IS the trigger warning.

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Technically, this is a DNF review. Surprising absolutely no one, this book proved too much for me. I wasn’t able to finish it. But I read a big chunk of it, and then the ending, and I have enough thoughts for a full review, so. Enjoy?

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I am a horror wimp. I’ve said it many times. But I loved Manhunt so much that I thought I could make it through Cuckoo too, and folx, it turns out I Cannot. My stomach is too weak, and my rage is too great. I found the supernatural, monster parts so much less scary than the human awfulness (I would not be surprised if that was deliberate on Felker-Martin’s part), and it turns out I have an easier time reading about apocalypses than I do conversion camps.

It will probably not surprise you when I say that I hate conversion camps. Of course I do. But I knew that Cuckoo was about one, and I thought I was mentally and emotionally prepared for that aspect, going in.

I was not.

It’s not as simple as, this is a Thing for me. I have read other stories about conversion camps that did not make me react this way, that didn’t claw inside me and shred my guts, the insides of my head. It’s all about execution, isn’t it? Two people can write about the same kind of monster, and one will put you to sleep while the other makes sure you never sleep again.

Spoiler: Cuckoo did not put me to sleep.

Felker-Martin’s writing is so immersive that there was just no way to keep any part of myself calmly detached. I had no chance of keeping my chill. She had me going from 0 to 100 in seconds, over and over again, every time some new awful thing happened, and it’s not that I’ve never experienced that (although not often; I can name the authors who get me that hard in Feels on the fingers of one hand), but there was something different about the emotions I felt, reading this.

I mean, Manhunt made me rage; transphobia is personal to me in a way that conversion camps are not; the willingness of a certain kind of ‘polite’ liberal and/or the kind of prim and proper cis LGBs (no T, and by gods no +) to turn their backs on trans and non-binary people is fucking personal; I want every TERF to be roasted to death on a spit.

And yet what I felt, reading Cuckoo, exploded from somewhere even deeper than my feelings about transphobia. There was a different quality to the rage and hate and helplessness this book made me feel, something I’m not familiar with, that I don’t ever remember feeling before. I don’t know how to explain it. I can only tell you that it was kind of terrifying, feeling that. It was a bit addictive and a lot scary. I don’t know when I’ve ever sunk that deep into a story, and it’s not because of the topic, it’s not because the characters are queer. I’ve read things like that before and not felt this. This was wholly Felker-Martin’s unique brand of black magic, is all I can say.

With Manhunt, I couldn’t put the book down because I needed to be sure the main characters were going to be okay. I desperately needed them to be okay. Cuckoo, though, switches POV a lot more often, and although Felker-Martin does a very good job of giving you reasons to care about each character right away, those rapid POV shifts meant it was a bit easier not to get so attached. Combined with the nausea-hate-fury the whole book ignited in me, it was easier to walk away from Cuckoo than it was Manhunt, and I think I needed to walk away.

And I think a big part of that is because [what I read of] the horror in this book is not, as might be expected, the monsters. It’s not even the people running the camp. It’s not even the world outside the camp, which allows places like this to exist. All of those things are horrifying, and they are rage-inducing, but that’s not what got me.

It was the slowly glowing realisation that the real villains here are the parents.

<They were talking about pitting themselves against adults, against people whose authority over them was as total as it was unquestioned, who had the right to drive and carry guns and drink themselves stupid without worrying they’d get caught. They were talking, he realized with a cold thrill, about fighting their parents.>

In the opening chapters, we see several of the characters being abducted (and it is a fucking abduction, I don’t care that their parents signed permission forms) by the camp guards, thrown into trucks and driven off. Which means we do get a glimpse of a few of the parents – who in those moments are depicted as enragingly pathetic, unable to face the reality of the violence they’ve paid for, but equally unwilling to put a stop to it. As the book goes on, all the characters give us flashbacks (not whole scenes, more snippets of dialogue from past conversations and the like) to their parents, who are, without exception, either actively or passively evil (ie, physically/verbally/sexually abusive, or allowing the abuse to happen). And although on the surface it’s the people running the camp who are the bad guys (and do not get me wrong, they are villains), gradually, it becomes clear that those people are really only stand-ins for the parents.

Because they are, aren’t they? What they’re doing to these kids, the parents have signed off on. They have paid for these people to do these things. They would do these things themselves, if they had the stomach for it. They are as guilty as is the person who hires the assassin; it may be someone else who pulls the trigger, but if you hire a hitman, you, too, are guilty of murder, ethically and legally.

(I want to know: in real life, do any survivors of these places ever sue their parents for abuse? Is that a thing? Do they ever file charges of assault? Are they able to? Does the law even allow for that? I don’t want to look it up, because the search results would break my heart and send my blood pressure through the roof, I’m sure. But I can’t help wondering.)

I think this is brilliant of Felker-Martin. It’s a point I’m not sure I’ve ever seen made about conversion camps/’therapies’ before. We always talk about, how can these places exist, how evil the people running them are. But we almost never talk about those who deliberately and knowingly and nonconsensually send their children there.

When I was about 11, I remember being surprised, and confused, when I discovered that the penalty for buying stolen goods was a much longer prison sentence than burglary/theft was. When I asked why, it was explained to me that if no one bought stolen goods, no one would steal those goods. It was the fault of buyers/the black market that the thefts happened at all.

It’s the same thing here: no matter how you spin it, conversion camps and the like would not exist if no one was willing to send their kids to them. And that places the ultimate responsibility for their existence, and anything that happens at them, on the parents.

Cuckoo is a masterpiece in a whole bunch of other ways. It’s brutal, and gross, and mercilessly incisive. There is delicate and precious love and yearning that will have you tearing up, and none of it is safe. Felker-Martin glories in the body-horror, at which she excels. The monsters – the supernatural ones, I mean – are exquisitely horrifying. Punches are not pulled, no awfulness is flinched away from, Felker-Martin grips you by the hair and makes you look at it all – and there is absolutely no guarantee that everyone is getting out alive. No one and nothing is going to hold you hand. The worst that you can imagine will happen, and then things that are worse than that.

I read the first half, then jumped to the ending. I know.

But it’s the parent thing that’s going to stick with me.

This is an excellent book. It got under my skin, and if you give it a chance, it will get under yours. I couldn’t even read the whole thing, and I know I’m not going to forget a single page of what I read. This is horror at its most horrifying.

I mean, beware of literally all the possible content warnings/triggers. But if you want horror that’s going to give you nightmares, rip your heart out, make you think, and want to burn the whole fucking world down?

Then Cuckoo is simply – terrifyingly – perfect.

A cast of LGBTQIA+ youth try to survive a conversion camp in the middle of the desert. The body horror in this book is incredibly descriptive and disgusting (in the best way!).
I found it hard to keep track of all the different characters- while I appreciate the inclusivity, it did at times feel a little like some characters were only there to check a box.
The pacing is pretty good, but sometimes bogged down by paragraphs of detail and description that start to feel a little bit like bear poetry?
I also found it incredibly bizarre how horny all of the characters are at all times…as hormonal kids in a camp setting I *guess* it makes sense, but I just found it hard to believe that whilst running from/battling the horrors of camp resolution, grieving their fallen friends and desperately trying to survive, these kids were either getting weird with eachother, or getting riled up thinking about it.
Unfortunately this trend continues even once we catch up with the characters as adults.
Overall, I did enjoy the ride and would recommend this one to anyone looking for a truly nasty body horror.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC!

The prologue is incredible! Felker-Martin knows how to tell a nasty tale and I was immediately hooked.

Unfortunately, the rest of the book is not as strong as the first chapter. The biggest problem is that there are too many point-of-view characters. It is very challenging to keep track of all of them or invest in them. What's more, this is the horniest and filthiest group of kids I've ever read about. I get that they are hormonal, but these kids seem to be aroused by every human they encounter. Coupled with the author's focus on the grimier elements of like pubes on toilet seats, sweat-soaked clothes, and first kisses in bathroom stalls. I was left confused and grossed out.

The author is clearly influenced by Stephen King namely his novel It. The book reads like a what-if version of the book with kids at a gay conversion camp. Sadly, Cuckoo misses the mark. I didn't feel bonded to these characters like I did with the losers in It. Cuckoo tries to duplicate the structure of It ie having half the book with the characters as kids and the other half with them as adults. This worked in It namely due to the book being so long. It does not work in Cuckoo. The book is too short and there are too many POV characters to pull this off. One of the characters is even a shameless ripoff of Henry Bowers. To make things even more confusing, one of the characters transitions to female in the second half of the book and goes by a new name. The book assumes we know who this character is and doesn't clarify until many chapters later. This makes zero sense since the author tells us right away with another trans character,

The other reason Cuckoo fails where It succeeds is the monster. Pennywise is an epic monster that feeds on fear. The cuckoo...well, not so much. It's more like The Thing without the great body horror moments.

This one wasn't for me, but if you love Stephen King's It or LQBTQIA+ horror, it is worth checking out.

Felker-Martin's truest strength, besides a knack for the most disgusting descriptions of broken teeth and flesh gobbets and piles of hair, are her characters; since starting it, the whole time I wasn't reading this book I was worrying about these children (to be honest I still think about Fran and Beth all the time too). These kids colored my entire experience with this book in a profound way and I'm sure I'll still be thinking of them all for months to come, which is great because it'll help me forget about the rushed-feeling last third of this book where they're all grown up and come up with a mildly preposterous plan to save the day.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this story. It was a superior look at the horrors of conversion camps, religion and unhealthy family dynamics. There were moments in this book I was left truly jaw dropped. It was a crazy wild ride and I enjoyed it SO much!

I was so excited to read this arc after absolutely loving Manhunt! This story did not disappoint. I found the story original, compelling, and terrifying. It was certainly a difficult read, dealing with a lot of tough subject matter. I enjoyed the cast of characters although, I found myself having a tough time keeping up with everyone for the majority of the book. I felt the story jumped around quite a bit, dwelling on certain scenes that could have been shorter while not providing enough of others. Some scenes, I found myself a little confused of where we were and how we got there. I will say, this took me a bit to finish and, I think it would do this story justice to read at a quicker pace than I did. I got really strong It vibes from this book and I could clearly see the author's horror influences which, as a horror fan, I truly appreciated. A great, strong novel!

one part "nightmare on elm street" one part "it," gretchen felker-martin's Cuckoo is one of the most innovative horror novels of the 2020's. the book follows a group of teens who meet at conversion camp, though the horrors only begin there. soon, dogs with glowing eyes, doubles of friends and the dark woods that surround them force the group to attempt to escape.

despite the initial draw, there are long passages here that spiral into what i can only describe as word vomit. while this may add an authenticity to the point of views we're introduced to, each chapter bounces around so much in a way that makes it nearly impossible to understand who's POV we're actually reading from. that, and the inherent messiness of the novels prose make for a challenging read. however, as it goes along, felker-martin's prose gets tighter and so does Cuckoo. the final 100 pages are almost perfect, and i couldn't help but wish the whole book felt this way.

Set partly in a camp meant to "reform" LGBQTA adolescents, and partly in the grim world of 21st century America, this novel gives a horrific take on what might happen if such camps really did "re-form" their victims. Six teen characters take on not just the vicious "Christians" running the camp, but the horrific alien which has subsumed them. Lots of body horror to go with the horrific situation.

I had a very difficult time here- long sections of word vomit trying to sound other worldly, never a big showdown, and had a hard time at the beginning keeping the number of characters aligned in my head (jumping between 6-7 POV's took some mental strength to keep straight.) The story was there, I just think it got lost in the execution, time jumps, and ever shifting POV. I also would have loved for the Cuckoo to be explained a bit more- I had issue picturing it throughout from the text.

"He has breasts, and it's not fair that he does, it's disgusting, or it's beautiful, or I hate him, or something is very wrong."

Genre: LGBT Horror
Release date: June 11th
Rating: 3.5/5
Review: 1990s queer camp horror: SIGN ME UP is exactly what I said. The gore and descriptions were graphic and bold, staying true to the central message of it all. Homophobia and transphobia are explicitly shown and the people who SHOULD read it won't, which is unfortunate. It's a vicious and carnal conversion horror camp with raw emotions. Aside from the true horror mirrored from reality, it is a fun body horror book perfect for the summer. Do check content warnings on this one!

My dislikes: It was expected to read sex scenes, but it was done in too much disturbing detail; because they are kids, it just wasn't up my alley.
Part 1 felt extremely slow, and I understand why, but I think it could've been shorter. It also gets hard to keep track of characters sometimes.

Thank you NetGalley for the digital ARC

Let me just start out by saying… I HATE deadlines when reading. I read a LOT of books and sometimes overlap. I should have prioritized this book before others because I’m halfway done and literally couldn’t put it down until the time expired and now I have to wait til release date to find out how it all ends. Gretchen has outdone herself. I was a fan of Manhunt but this one, in my opinion, has outdone that release. I love her representation she puts in her stories. It’s not forced, it’s just perfectly executed in this ‘camp to make you straight’ type storyline! I highly recommend this book for all horror enthusiasts

I didn't love this. It's heavily influenced by Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but to me it felt like a queer retelling of IT. In other words, I expected something a bit more original than what I got, and after so much hype for Felker-Martin's debut novel in 2022, I also expected more from the writing, but I found it overly descriptive - like there was so much going on that I couldn't actually figure out what was being described, particularly when it came to the titular villain. It seemed to be everything all at once, so I had difficulty picturing it.

Cosmic horror meets conversion camp! There’s so many characters and storylines woven together in this one. The story is heartbreaking and heart-stopping. Tons of great characters. Written with the heart.

I have so many thoughts about this that I can't even begin to string together, so here's a list:

-so many little references and head nods without needing to pat itself on the back for them
-sometimes queer survival is living and "resilience" is a joke
-probably the grossest book I've ever read and yet the grossness lies in how well it is written
-there are so many characters and head hopping but the alternative would be chapter POVs, no thank you and in the end they're all so good so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Okay. This one was wild, and I loved every single second of it. It was like a mashup between Stephen King's IT and Nick Cutter's The Troop. Definitely gave me vibes of both books, but now make it queer.

This book was what I thought Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus was going to be - also some similar themes, though.

I loved the horror. Its some really great body horror, which is why I referenced The Troop. The big bad was really big bad and there's this sense of dread that exists when not really knowing who your enemy really is - loved the evil entity in this one.

I loved the time jump in the middle of the book. The character development and growth was what sold me on this story. These kids are in an unimaginable situation as teens - trying to live and figure themselves out, all while dealing with this evil that exists in the world - both literal and figurative. They come into their own, and while it's not perfect and they're all messy, they grow and become comfortable with themselves - which I absolutely loved.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Couldn't put it down. Will definitely have to check out Manhunt, as well.

I would like to thank Net Galley and Tor Nightfire for allowing me to read and review this e-arc.

In the tradition of Manhunt, Cuckoo dives into harsh realities with poetic horror. The reader is thrust into the world of ‘conversion camps’ and all the yuck that comes with that. A group of queer teens must fight back against the ultimate evil! Throw in an 80s vibe and a definite nod to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and you have the recipe for a fantastic ride. Not to mention the Cosmic Horror vibes!

Some readers may be turned off by having so many POVs to keep track of, but I didn’t find that an issue. The constant rotating POVs kept me engaged with the story and wanting to see where it ends.

Cuckoo is an angst-fueled, kick-ass, character-driven good time. It will be available on June 11th, 2024, from your favorite book slingers. 4 out of 5 stars.

I loved reading Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin so I was excited to see another release by this author. The story covers a diverse cast of teens sent away to a conversion camp in the middle of nowhere. The group quickly discovers there’s something even more sinister going on around them as it seems something is taking over the bodies of the counselors. The first part of the book centers around their horrific and traumatic camp experience escaping the ever present threat of “cuckoo”. The last part of the book covers the survivors trying to put an end to the nightmare once and for all as it threatens to take more teens they care about. I would have liked to see the time after their escape from the camp a bit more fleshed out than the somewhat abrupt time jump. I appreciate that a horror book centering trans and queer characters was written by a trans author. Because of the large number of characters in this story it was somewhat difficult to follow at times however it only contributed to the complexity of the story. This book was weird, intense, emotional, creepy, and gory at times. I highly recommend this book! I will read anything Gretchen puts out going forward. Please check the trigger warnings before reading. Thank you Tor/Forge for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Just like with the author's last book Manhunt I went in expecting more than I ended up getting. Start with a good premise and just bombard it with preachy nonsense till only your friends can enjoy it. Not for me.

As with Manhunt, Felker-Martin does a brilliant job crafting queer horror where the true monstrosity is the various ways that bigotry and hatred suffuses people's bones and becomes a physical force. Genuinely challenging to get through at times. I'm desperately eager to read more of her work!!

I definitely liked the Invasion of the Body Snatchers vibe here. I was also surprised and delighted that this becomes pretty full-on horror. It doesn’t stint on giving you some seriously messed up situations!

Readers sensitive to blood, gore and sex, may wish to tread carefully.

Where I struggled was with some of our characters. Many of them blended in so thoroughly that I wasn’t sure who I was reading at times. In fact, there’s one character who pops up later in the book that, while ostensibly in the book the whole time, I seem to have wiped from my memory! I mean they’re suddenly in the book, all the characters know them and reference them as being part of the first part of the book, and I’m completely blank. Even after finishing the book, I would swear that this character did not exist in the first part of the book! (Note: it is entirely possible that this is a me problem. Maybe my reading comprehension was off?)

It wasn’t just this character, though. Transitions between character points of view were a bit shaky here and there and caused confusion.

Overall, I did like the book. I just needed a bit stronger characterization to really engage.

• ARC via Publisher