This one didn't really work for me.
Too many genres , too many characters.
Some interesting bits, but I felt I never fully got into any part of the story.

This is a great read, digested it in one sitting! Such an easy book to follow, and did not want to put it down!

Thanks to ECW Press and Netgalley for an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

First of all, I love eco-horror. I love stories about cities. I love themes of decay. This book hit all of those boxes in a really delightful way. Something about the writing tugged everything together in the end and I just! Really enjoyed it as it did!

That being said, at times the varying plotlines we're disconcerting, but I'm glad that they were there to show the pervasive and inescapable nature of The Wet — which leads me to my last point. I loved how well this book captured feelings of inescapability, it managed to do that in a really potent way.

Finally: the concept of the gardeners and of that as an accepted and common secret fucked me up I was so delighted by it. Genuinely, this is such a funky little dystopian horror book that feels beautifully plausible!!

This is The Day After Tomorrow in novel form, right?

Toronto and its condos have never looked so grim

What a way to see the city. This is dystopian fare but how much is true or could be?
Scary stuff

I loved this. Horror/sci-fi is one of my favorite genres and making this center on gentrification and eco politics and socioeconomics was a trifecta for me. That being said. This is told from multiple POVs, and if you don’t like that type of narrative device, you should probably skip this, as it is hard to keep up with. Thank you ECW Press & NetGalley for the eARC

This was such an intriguing book! I loved the multiple perspectives and couldn't choose a favourite one, although I particularly like the short chapters where the various tenants of The Marigold are inspected. The Marigold keeps you hooked while you try to figure out what's going on, while exploring various human questions .

.The Marigold follows a host of characters whose lives revolve around
'The Marigold', a high rise block of flats. A mysterious threat of the 'Wet', which is a biological force that begins to spread through the apartments

This was not for me, I found it difficult to connect with the characters and was uninterested in the plot. This may work for some people but not me.

Some of the best writing to hit the shelves for next year guaranteed. This is one of kind and I recommend everyone picks it up.

What's most incredible about this novel, and its most entertaining aspect, is the minutely detailed narrative of its many characters' psyches, delving deeply and turning up, revealing to the sun and readers' eyes, their dark moldy secret obsessions, greed, hatred, biases, and many other flaws hidden underneath. In that way, they're similar to (as well as residents of) the eponymous ultra-skyscraper, the Marigold: ostensibly a building of good, widely-sought-after, luxury condos while secretly breeding an insidious biological terror, the Wet, underneath. In Sullivan's indelible, delightfully horrific tale, it's ALL coming out of the basement. Thanks to Netgalley and ECW Press for the DRC of this very entertaining, thought-provoking, well-written book, the best horror I've read since King's.

The Marigold is set in a near future Toronto, and centres around a new hotel development, and an organism that has evolved under the streets.

The book follows numerous separate stories which do not intersect a whole lot, it's a dense and tightly packed novel which can be at times a little difficult to follow. Nonetheless, the writing can't be faulted and the story itself is quite unique.

I kindly received an ARC of this in exchange for an honest review, thanks to NetGalley.

This is a well written novel with a wide range of characters. It came across to me as less science fiction and almost satire about gross excess, ruling classes and to a lesser extent, environmental destruction.

Despite the good prose and unique storyline I unfortunately didn’t find myself completely drawn in. Characters overlapped slightly and struggled to carve themselves as unique. I can’t quite put a handle on it but I wasn’t ever connected to the world and remained detached.

Overall a decent effort and I’d read something by the author again, but fell slightly short whilst aiming high.

Absolutely terrifying.

TW for bodyhorror if that isn't your thing, but this was done exceptionally well. Not overplayed or amped up just for the ick and wow factor, the creepiness oozes into your skin and clings to your bones page after page. Definitely worth a read this Halloween season, or any time you're feeling the need to bring a little horrific atmosphere into your life.

The Marigold is set to be published on April 18th, 2023. Thank you to ECW Press, NetGalley and the author for the ARC.

I'd never read Andrew F. Sullivan before but was immediately sucked in by his prose upon starting The Marigold. There's a directness to his writing that made the horror elements more insidious and the social satire more biting. Before I started The Marigold, I had seen it described as a sci-fi thriller, but if you're looking for a fast-paced, suspenseful read you should pick another title. The plot itself is fascinating, but The Marigold is more about the ideas and atmosphere than a traditional narrative arc. The many characters it bounces between all feel immediately lived in and complex, but the horror -- particularly the body horror -- is the book's strongest feature and there are a few images that became seared into my brain.

The Marigold is set in future Toronto, where a mysterious fungus called the Wet is destroying buildings and also killing inhabitants. This book is a crazy mix of science fiction, horror, and social commentary on the wealthy's exploitation of the poor and the environment.

What I liked about this book:
-interesting plot/concept that had a lot of potential
-the author did a fantastic job of making me feel dread and unease the entire time I was reading this book. The world that he created was very bleak and certain images stayed with me.

What I didn't like:
-this book was very confusing at times. There were a lot of characters and many that you only met once. It was hard to keep track of who was who and how they were connected. I felt like I didn't really understand what was going on for the first half or so. It was made clear by the end, but it was a very slow buildup
-I felt like the short chapters on the minor characters could have been eliminated so that the main characters could have been developed more.
-the pacing was slow and this book was too long. It took me much longer to read this book compared to others of similar length.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this book

The Marigold by Andrew F Sullivan, like the mysterious antagonist of the novel: “The Wet”, is an amalgamation of different genres and themes: horror, dystopian, eco-fiction and a critique of capitalism. It follows a host of characters whose lives revolve around The Marigold, a high rise block of flats. The novel explores the emergence of a mysterious threat of the Wet, a biological force that begins to spread through the apartments of the Marigold and the lives of its inhabitants.

I initially found it difficult to connect with the characters, with the Marigold and the Wet feeling like the main consistent device to connect the narrative. There are lots of characters introduced with some having self-contained stories within chapters. This made the novel appear disconnected at first, however it becomes clear that Sullivan has carefully crafted this to make the reader feel the isolation that the inhabitants of the high rise flats feel. The characters, despite living in very close proximity to each other, live isolated and claustrophobic lives. As the novel develops the connections between characters grow and they came together in my head more as a reader, just as all are consumed in the Wet. Whilst this literary technique is clever and draw us as readers into the themes of the book, for me it also acted as a bit of a barrier to becoming emotionally invested and connected to the characters.

Overall, this was a highly enjoyable read and I’ll be interested to read more of Andrew F Sullivan’s work as he has a distinctive voice, style and clever concepts to bring to fiction. A solid 3.5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and ECW Press, who provided a complimentary eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was not my usual reading matter. It was a complex story told from the perspective of different disparate characters. It was hard to keep track at times and because of its length I might have found it easier to read as a proper paper book so I could go back to reread sections easily. At times I felt a bit squeamish! I think this will be picked up as a movie. It has all the elements for future horror genre.

(3.5) Once the story got going, I really quite liked this book. I love how all the stories were interwoven and the apocalyptic nature of the setting.

Set in some a not-so-distant future Toronto, The Marigold is an interesting piece of “weird -ish” fiction. There are a lot of enjoyable elements of this story; it’s creative and unpredictable, and it has some interesting meditations on class and housing crisis. I would recommend it for those who like a weird or speculative bent to their fiction. Overall, I would give it 3.5 stars if possible, as I’m glad I read it but thought that it didn’t come fully together. I cared about some characters’ plot lines much more then others, and the ending didn’t feel totally cohesive or like it gave proper resolution to all the different storylines.

Marigold is set in a Toronto of the near future, a city rotting away from the inside. You may read this as allegory if you wish. In a series of more or less loosely connected vignettes, we follow a selection of people who call this mouldering city home: some of them are responsible for what is happening, some are looking to fight it; others are just trying to survive. In this it becomes a study of human character against a dystopian backdrop of oozing bodyhorror.

The horror is where the book shines: always straddling that border between almost-understanding and completely alien otherness. L'appel du vide becomes l'appel du monstre, and though the characters may deal with it all in their own different ways, they all hear its call.

The vignettes about the many characters, some of whom we only meet once, set against this monstrous city that is devouring its inhabitants is disorienting, but I think it is meant to be. The reader experiences some of the same struggle to understand as the characters do, there's no superior knowledge that the reader holds over the characters whose fates he follows. I can see how that might be off-putting to readers who prefer a clear, linear narrative, but I thought it was skillfully done and comes together well in the end.

I'd recommend this to readers who enjoy slightly psychedelic horror/urban fantasy in the vein of China Mieville, Jeff VanderMeer or the Nyquist-novels by Jeff Noon.

I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions here expressed are my own.

There's a lot of social commentary here, along with unlikable characters. I didn't like it as much as others in this genre, but the writing is pretty good. Some will find the plot hard to follow, but I liked it overall.

I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!