Adult | Science Fiction

This one didn’t fully land for me, and that's sad because these types of books are things I enjoy read.

The premise had promise—blending elements of body horror, found family, and near-future sci-fi—but the execution felt uneven. The book starts off strong with a jarring scene that suggested we were headed into something gritty and horrific, but then it shifts into a slower, more meandering story that never quite regained that intensity until the last few pages.

The pacing was a struggle. Most of the actual plot happens around the 70% mark, and even then, much of it happens off-page. The main character spends a lot of time unconscious or removed from the action, which made it hard to stay grounded or emotionally invested.

Stylistically, I did enjoy moments where the writing felt like a story being told—it created a bit of distance in a way that worked sometimes. But overall, the narrative felt repetitive, and I didn’t connect with the main character in meaningful ways, which I guess is the point since she's an alien. The side characters emotional reactions felt flat, and even the found family element didn’t carry the weight it could have.

The book also dives into topics like gender identity, sexuality, and minority rights—which are important—but often in a way that felt more like a lecture than an organic part of the story. These moments pulled me out of the narrative, rather than enriching it.

I do hope the graphic scene in the beginning is called out as a CW since it might upset some readers.

In the end, I think I liked the concept more than the execution. The atmosphere never quite matched the stakes the story seemed to set up, and too many important moments felt glossed over or emotionally muted.

Thank you to TOR for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Another sci-fi horror win for Mira Grant. From the age of 3, Anastasia has been telling anyone who will listen that she is from an alien race, coming to invade earth. By the time she is 35 years old, most of her family and friends think this is just a funny quirk, when out of nowhere a scientist picks up an alien communication signal. Anastasia now questions, is her family finally coming to get her?
The premise of this book caught me right away, but this book packed such an emotional punch, it touches on trans rights, immigration, and colonization. It also talks about big philosophical questions, is humanity worth saving? how important community is to individuals, to have that sense of belonging.
I adored the sci-fi aspects of this book, an alien race of sentient plants, sign me up! This also is very gory at parts, so beware, it lives up to its horror category.
This is a me issue, but I was hoping for more expansion on the alien front, with all the different races of alien plants.
I went into this for the gory fun, and came out contemplating philosophical concepts! A win in my book.

Anastasia Miller has introduced herself as an alien, the vanguard of an invasion, since she was three years old. Turns out, the invasion is real, and it’s already starting.

Overgrowth is a unique twist on invasion of the body snatchers with plant-based aliens. Instead of a traditional thriller focusing on the hero, however, Ms. Grant flips the script. We focus on a member of the alien vanguard who has lived, and grown up, as a human since the human child whose place she took was three years old.

This is a superb character-focused sci-fi with a solid alien invasion story as the framing device. Believable, diverse, characters. Found family (ish) fighting their way through tragedy. Difficult choices. Love / relationships through trauma. All around excellent character-driven sci-fi.

Strong recommendation.

Note that, while this is reasonably categorized as sci-fi horror, it is light horror (at least for me). This is *not* jump scares, heart racing, high tension, terrified for the characters, horror. Rather, the horror components are in the mechanism of invasion, light body horror, and end of world scenarios. This could, in my opinion, have come just as easily from Seanan McGuire as from her pseudonym Mira Grant.

Thanks to @tornightfire and @netgalley for the eArc.

Read April 28, 2025.

This is my first read from Mira Grant, and it was an interesting one, I haven't read an alien book like this. For more sensitive readers I would point out that child death is a big part of the plot. If you are a horror sci-fi fan and can look past that, this was an entertaining read.

The aliens of this story are very much trying to take over the world, their strategy being replace enough people to have the high ground and wait it out for the right moment (several years later). We follow Stasia (Anastasia) as they navigate the oncoming alien invasion, and the complication that she is actually one of them. This book took me by surprise, there were a lot of moments grappling with identity, friendship, and perseverance. I thought it was a smart and interesting choice to focus the narration from the viewpoint of one of the aliens attempting to conquer the world, and I also enjoyed how the plot navigates us through the "humanity" of Stasia. Don't let the found family heart of this story let your guard down, Grant sets up ominous and unsettling scenes very well, and the story has plenty of strong body horror elements. I look forward to reading more from Grant!

Thank you to Tor Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

This one was okay, I just think I wasn't the reader for the book. However I do see many readers absolutely love it

Thank you to NetGalley, Tor Nightfire, and Mira Grant for the opportunity to read this eARC!

Alien plants taking over the earth? Say less! I actually think this one is best to go in blind but I will say, plenty of body horror and plot!

Alien plant life coming to take over the Earth, you say? I’m here for it! 🙌

This was my first read by Mira Grant (despite having the entire Newsflesh series sitting on my TBR) and I absolutely loved it! Scifi horror is my favorite genre mashup and this one does not disappoint! 👏

I do think the body horror could have been even more horrific than it was, but it was still pretty vivid. 🫣 I loved the Stasia character and the ending was excellent!! Highly recommend this one! 🤓

TW: child death, body horror

Thank you to NetGalley, Tor Nightfire, and Mira Grant for the opportunity to read the eARC in exchange for my honest review! ❤️

V meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Day of the Triffids with a little bit of The Stand thrown in.
Mira Grant's latest is an alien invasion story centered around a young woman who has been telling people since she was three years old that she is an alien and that an invasion is coming. Everyone thought is was a quirk - until an amateur astronomer intercepts a signal that announces the presence of aliens, and they're coming this way.

This could easily be a classic and rote invasion novel, but Grant has a real gift for writing compelling and very real characters and giving readers plenty of insight into their motivations and thoughts while also moving the book along at a quick pace. In a short span of time, Grant finds a way to make us care about a lot of people an how events are going to impact each of them.
But where Grant really shines in this and other of her monstercentric books is in her creation of those monsters. The aliens are fascinating, both in their appearance (which she gives us in amazing detail) and their culture, while also being terrifying in their motivation and capability.

Great book in the spirit of War of the Worlds with a thing or two to say about humanity.

Mira Grant - or any penname of Seanan McGuire's - is an automatic read for me. I adore the way that the narratives and characters are built, the way that the stories just skewer away enough from what you think you know, whilst paying homage and reverence to the materials from which she draws inspiration.

I really had no idea where this story was going to take me. It rode the line between The Little Shop of Horrors, War of the Worlds, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with the kind of humor and heartbreak you expect from a Mira Grant story.

It was easy to relate to Stasia, especially in a politically fraught climate and I feel like having this story helped to heal a little part of me, and grow the parts that are ready to take a stand.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor for the eARC.

I was so fascinated by Overgrowth. Anastasia at 3 years old wanders in to the woods behind her home. She emerges three days later, not as she was. This alien invasion, seed pod, body snatching book was so good. I loved the found family, trans rep and overall what would you do theme. If you had to choose between love and humanity, what would you choose?
For me, this book is only lacking in intensity in the first 60%. I personally prefer a high stakes level intensity from the beginning, especially with sci-fi.

im not entirely sure my feelings on this one. i’ve been stewing on it for a few days after reading it and im still unsure how i feel. the writing is very descriptive which others could love but i had a hard time with it because i have aphantasia so i felt like i was missing out on certain descriptions of characters and scenes. i did enjoy our cast of characters however. i loved the interactions between all of them and i definitely felt emotional at times. overall it was a decent reading experience and i would read from mira grant again.

4.5⭐. Thank you NetGalley and Tor for the ARC.

I'm new to reading sci-fi horror and this was definitely one that's going to stick with me like ivy growing up a wall. The horror starts in the opening chapter, when the reader learns exactly how the sentient plant aliens infiltrate human society, and we're introduced to our protagonist Anastasia "Stasia" Miller—now an alien wearing the skin of a human girl. It's violent, creepy, horrific and utterly tragic.

I think this was an excellent creative choice, because from here on, this is a novel that intends to invoke mixed feelings in its reader. Every time we lean towards ANY sympathy at all to Stasia, even at the valid instances, we're reminded that her living on Earth for so long could only occur with the sacrifice of her human "template". We're reminded that her species intends to invade Earth for their own non-altruistic purposes. There's an inherent wrongness in this upcoming event that will lead to the death of billions, and the way the aliens explain the necessity of it for the survival of their own species is clinical and cold.

It's absolutely fascinating how Overgrowth uses the alien allegory to discuss diaspora issues and xenophobia, yet at the same time, it's highly ironic. The presumption that "all people of color are dangerous" is rooted in bigotry, but Stasia and every member of her species have been announcing that they planned to invade since Day 1. We are reading the POV of a character who, at the end of the day, is going to benefit from this brutal invasion. And she will reap those benefits alongside the other aliens. This novel feels contradictory because while it paints humanity's response to the impending invasion as vile (e.g. detaining Stasia for interrogation and taking pieces of her flesh and blood to see if a "weedkiller" can be made; other humans attacking their longtime loved ones as soon as they're revealed to be secretly aliens), you can't also justify the literal colonizing aliens as being in the right.

But it is this sort of greyness in Stasia's morality that is captivating to read. She herself struggles with conflicted feelings towards humanity's fate and her alien family's actions. Regardless, at the end of the day, she's always been fairly consistent with which side she's on ... And YET. Despite her complicity in the invasion, I still find her a likeable character? There's something about her steadfast love for her human boyfriend and friends that make me, at the very least, want to root for THEIR survival alongside hers. The inevitable tragedy that looms over the reader is bittersweet the further along you read.

I did like the human supporting characters for the most part, but I do think the story could've pushed Graham, Stasia's boyfriend who is a trans man, to be MORE than just the Wholesome Supportive Love Interest. While there certainly were instances of him getting into conflict with his alien girlfriend who's literally part of a murderous race, those were largely glossed over because of external factors like the US government and other humans threatening their safety, and the fact that he ~loves her so much~. I appreciate a man being loyal, but boy, everyone you know is about to DIE and your girlfriend doesn't really care THAT much beyond her initial conflicted feelings. That should've been a bigger point of contention.

All in all, I do find this to be more enjoyable once I adjusted how I view this novel: the villain's POV.

Overgrowth is a gorgeously weird trip into cosmic bio horror, and I was totally hooked. I loved the unsettling ambiguity—whether the real threat was the aliens or humanity itself—and how Mira Grant let that tension simmer. Some parts leaned a little heavy on the detail, but overall, the story’s eerie atmosphere and creeping dread more than made up for it. Strange, smart, and deeply unsettling in the best way. I’ve never been more ready for an alien invasion!

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for the eARC!

This was an amazing science fiction/dystopia/body horror book. I loved it. Mira Grant is a fantastic writer, and this book was full of gorgeous scenes. Grant clearly thought out this entire world and did such a good job of unwrapping it for us, the readers.
Pay attention to the body horror element - if that's going to bother you, this book isn't for you.
But it's a really beautiful study of humanity and what makes us human. I loved that some of this book made me uncomfortable to read - did I side with the humans? Did I side with the plant/alien invaders?
I loved how creative Grant was with creating the alien species, including the way they looked, the dream forest, the reason for invading, and how the invasion could have been stopped.
This book gave me so much to think about. When I finished it, I immediately wanted to start it again from the beginning. Highly recommend it!

The story starts with seeds from space landing on Earth. Anastasia, an adventurous 3-year-old, runs into the woods one day when her mother isn't watching her closely, and stumbles upon one of these space plants due to its intoxicating smell mimicking all of her favorite smells. When she touches the plant, the plant ends up eating her and absorbing her, drinking up her blood, and then out comes an alien copy of 3-year-old Anastasia. When she makes it back home and everyone asks where she has been, she states that she is an alien and part of the vanguard that is going to invade this planet. Everyone assumes she suffered from some trauma in the woods and just writes her off as weird. Fast-forward to 2031, Stasia is 35 years old, incredibly anti-social, and lives with two roommates who tolerate her weirdness as both are nerds as well. The flash-forward starts a 25-day countdown to the invasion.

WOW WOW WOW. I did not expect this book to be so wild. There is a lot going on in this book: identity, choice, transgender politics, birthright citizenship and rights - honestly, it was all really well done throughout the story that it didn't feel like too much. It was a great sci-fi, semi-horror novel. I really liked that the whole story was told through Stasia's eyes - the alien who was raised in a human world - which makes it seem like she is an unreliable narrator, but ends up being the most reliable as she always is honest with everyone she meets. I think there are definitely parts that could be chopped out as it was slow at times especially all the stuff once the aliens had invaded and she was having lots of conversations with them. I think people with either really like this book or think its not that great. 4 stars from me though!

This book has such a terrifying start. I was clenching it as I read like NOOOO ANASTASIA NOOOO! *insert Parker Posey voice*

I was satisfied by the horror of the beginning and thought I was gonna need to buckle up because this was going to be insanely scary but then it took a hard turn into satire and mellowed out real fast. I'm not sure how I feel about the quick switch up in directions for the book. I was really hoping for a unhinged, dark and scary horror, rather than where it ended up going.

The writing itself is great! The concept of alien plant life being the invaders and biding time until they are ready to come on over to Earth was great. Just not super happy with the direction the overall story took right after the initial start.

I was in the mood for a Jeff VanderMeer or Michael Crichton type of story, but this had a dofferent style so just know it's less frightening sci-fi and more silly/cutesy with some unsettling scenes thrown in here and there. So, I think my expectations just let me down but I do think there will be an audience that will love this and the found family and quirky aspects of the main character. It just wasn't my taste in stories.

What an interesting and dare I say, fun read, complete with the threat of full-scale alien invasion and the body horror of our protagonist, Anastasia Miller, inhabiting a human form that doesn’t truly represent her. The story starts out with an unknown narrator telling a story about our protagonist. We then jump to 1st person POV narrative from Stasia. We get lots of tongue in cheek humor that was so funny (especially if you’re a Little Shop of Horrors fan).

Mixed well with the humor, Mira Grant manages to tackle so many deep themes and current issues without ever seeming heavy handed, including climate change, mental health, birthright citizenship, gender identity, and fear mongering, to name a few. The story also features a slightly more unusual found family dynamic that I enjoyed. It’s packed with a ton of action and some really likable and unlikable characters, and a fair bit of wild creatures.

Although this is a horror novel and is certainly apocalyptic, for those of you who don’t enjoy horror elements, I never found it to be overly gross or gratuitous in those areas. I think you could still safely read this if it sounds interesting but you’re not typically into horror. That said, please always check the trigger warnings. Overall, I really enjoyed this one—it’s got well-developed characters (especially Stasia), solid world building when it comes to our aliens and encounters with them, and some well-executed beautiful themes. If you enjoy Jeff VanderMeer or Sylvain Neuvel, I think you could really enjoy this one too.

The opening chapter of Overgrowth is eerie and tense, but then the story shifts gears hard. What starts as dark, atmospheric sci-fi horror quickly turns into a much cozier, YA-feeling narrative focused on Anastasia and her ensemble of friends. The tonal whiplash is real, and the rest of the book never quite recovers from it.

There were some really thoughtful, introspective conversation throughout about inclusion and belonging, but there’s so much of it that it starts to drag. The same themes and ideas are rehashed again and again, and by the time the actual invasion begins, well over halfway through the novel, it was too little, too late, with most of the real action is packed into the last 50 pages.

There was some body horror, but it’s very light and tamed. This read is a good entry point for readers who are new to horror, but if you’re looking for something intense and terrifying (and in the same vein of Into the Drowning Deep) this one probably won’t hit the mark.

Anastasia Miller is just like you and me. She has roommates, a cat, a crappy customer service job with bad coworkers, has a nickname and oh yeah, she’s an alien plant. Specifically, the vanguard of her species impending invasion of Earth. Perhaps that part isn’t just like you and me.

Stasia has been on Earth over 30 years now, she’s the product of an alien flower that sprouted in the woods behind the human Anastasia Miller’s house. Human Anastasia was only 3 years old when she wandered off, smelled something delicious and ended up being the delicious item on the menu that day. Three days later Stasia was born, and from that day when she wandered back out of the woods to her mother, she told everyone that she was an alien plant from space. But no one listened.

Things start to change for Stasia when NASA confirms a signal released by an unknown scientist was not a hoax and was in fact a signal from outer space. She’s always dreamed of a forest, but her dreams become more vivid, and her body starts to change…

The following days and weeks leading to the invasion are full of reflection and more changes than she ever expected. Will she retain any of her humanity or will it all crumble away like dead leaves in the winter.

Overgrowth is coming, and you won’t be able to use weed killer on it. Pick up a copy on May 6th and join the invasion.

When randomly picking Into the Drowning Deep to read this month, I had completely forgotten that I, by chance, had another book by Mira Grant on my April TBR, and that I would be reading two novels by an author I had never tried before in a very short span of time. Thankfully, if Overgrowth is any indication of the level of horror that Grant is capable of, I am completely on board.
To lay it out very simply, Overgrowth is a scifi invasion story that centres on the experiences of Stasia, a vanguard for the invading race of sentient plants that was raised as a human.
Personally speaking, I have never found a character more simultaneously sympathetic and terrifying than Stasia is. While distinctly hybrid in much of her thought process—she isn’t human, but she has lived among them for her entire life—through her we are able to see the deeply complex moral dilemma between assimilation versus extinction, and the behavioural ramifications of humanity suddenly becoming prey within an ecosystem they previously were unchecked in. A bit like how people introduce a natural predator to isolated environments when pest populations get out of hand.
There is also a very interesting parallel to be seen with modern environmental sciences and global warming, and how humanity’s reaction to natural disasters has largely been apathetic or indifferent until directly impacted by them.
Overall, Overgrowth honestly feels like one of those horror books that should become part of the modern lexicon when addressing allegories in science fiction as a genre, and I say that with utmost hope that it will. This is a fantastic read, and if you love horror that makes you think, you will love this.