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!

I enjoyed this book a lot, it’s a really interesting spin on the classic plant invaders from space tale in that the main character , Stacia, is in fact part of the advance guard of the invasion. She always knows and tells people of this, but otherwise lives a normal life, largely dismissed as quirky/a weirdo depending how kind the folk in her orbit are. Joke’s on them when the plant ships turn up!

A good chunk of this book is the build up to the invasion. We get a lot of Stacia’s backstory and explore her feelings of isolation and ‘otherness’ throughout her life and are introduced to friends old and new who are trying to figure out what’s going on alongside her. This was all well done but did start to slightly drag for me and I was glad when we moved on to the arrival of our aliens. It was fascinating to learn more about them, culturally and biologically!

I wasn’t at all sure where the ending was going to go and it was definitely thought-provoking. Overall I would recommend this books for either fans of sci-fi or someone who fancies reading something a bit different!

Overgrowth is much more than your average story about an alien invasion. It’s a story about friendship, found family and at its core; a social commentary on the current state of the world in terms of immigration, racism and bigotry.

I quite enjoyed the story and really liked the character development, stand out characters for me were Toni and Graham! Unfortunately I felt that the story dragged a little bit in the middle and found a lot of Stasia’s monologue to be repetitive; so repetitive that I struggled to stay awake while I was reading in bed.

That aside I enjoyed it enough to add Mira Grant’s back catalogue to my TBR.
Thank you to NetGalley and Daphne Press for the opportunity to read this title.

3.5/5

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for a copy to review!

This was an alien story I haven't experienced before. I enjoyed how Stasias journey to find herself and her relationships with other characters, especially Graham. No one was perfect in this story, but thay pulled me even more!

I overall enjoyed this book, however I felt it was quite wordy. The discussions here are important and were handled with care, however the story truly dragged for about two thirds of the book. Also I missed more gory horror elements that we saw in “Into the Drowning Deep”. Overall I’d say the book could’ve gone there a bit more and spent less time rehashing same conversations.

On the surface, this is about plant aliens. Underneath that is an exploration of dehumanisation, what it means to be human, oppression, standing up to that oppression, forming community, and hope.

I loved how all the characters grow and change throughout, how they’re all learning new things about the world around them and, even though they all have very different responses to the incoming alien invasion, their focus is community because with collective strength, they know they can face whatever is coming for them

It’s something that felt very relevant, especially right now, about hatred aimed at anyone different from you. There was a conversation happening, too, about how a lot of that hate comes from fear and anger that was misplaced, but also entitlement, and how easily they justify that hatred.

It could be heavy, but it was well balanced with Mira Grant/Seanan McGuire humour so it weighed a little less.

I didn’t love this as much as Into the Drowning Deep, but I loved that a lot, so that is to be expected. I also felt like it was “incomplete”, and it dragged a bit in the middle. It was such a cool concept that I thought was, for the most part, done really well but I *really* wanted to know more about this world. Realistically, I’m not sure how that could have been done without this feeling like a textbook, but I would have been so interested in that.

Overall, a great read with plant aliens, what more could you want

“… through us, humanity will finally see the universe. We're going to carry them there, in the space beneath our skins.”

(I’d like to thank Netgalley and the publishers for accepting my request to read this arc in exchange for an honest review ♡)

This was my first ever sci-fi fantasy read (I’m keeping to my “try new genres this year” pledge) and I loved it! It was such a fun experience that was the perfect blend of humour, horror, romance, and existentialism.

It raised so many important questions and topics for me personally, and truly had me wondering just what would happen to human society if an alien invasion were to happen, especially if the aliens were already here among us.

The story follows Anastasia, one of the aliens, and her slow dissociation from humanity and the gradual adoption into her alien life/culture. This was such a unique concept to read through that piqued my attention as soon as I read through the summary and, thankfully, the story continues to grasp this concept tightly within its grip, doing it a great justice.

While I found this story to be funny, witty, and overall amusing in many parts, that’s not to say that it didn’t have its dark sides. I mean, within the first few pages of the story you read about how an alien plant seed lands on Earth and eventually devours a three-year-old girl and replaces her with a kind of alien doppelgänger and, as you read on, you come face to face with body horror, experimentation, and eventually colonialism and genocide. I really do have to applaud Grant for writing about so many dark topics, while also managing to write many light-hearted scenes that are amusing enough to soften the blows.

The inclusion of LGBTQ+ and Latino characters was also something that I greatly appreciated. It briefly explores the dehumanisation and alienation of both of these marginalised groups, Graham, a transgender man, and Mandy, an American-Mexican woman. It was actually crazy to see the aliens show more respect and decency towards these two characters than the majority of the human population, never targeting, belittling, or questioning either of the two characters, and seeming to make a purposeful effort to use he/him pronouns for Graham. Unfortunately, I can totally imagine real aliens to be more open-minded and respectful than the majority of human society.

The romance between Stasia and Graham, despite not being the main “topic” of the novel, was such a beautiful thing to read. In fact, many of the quotes that I underlined were between the two of these characters! Their relationship is healthy and communicative and just radiates strength. The ending of this book actually had me tearing up a lot because of how much I felt for the two of them and their relationship. I loved the way Grant wrote about the struggles they had faced in the past: Graham with his transition and Stasia with her loneliness/isolation/estrangement from most of society. The connection between the two was so pure!

I think the only places where it may have lost me a little was the slowness of the plot and the rushed ending. This odd pacing threw me out of the story a bit, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it was a joy to read and I don’t regret it.

Book Review
Overgrowth- Mira Grant

Thank-you to NetGalley, Tor Nightfire, and the author Mira Grant for the eARC of Overgrowth. Overgrowth followed the story of Anastasia, an alien plant in human form, during the commencement of an alien invasion of earth by her people. Although Stasia is a strange and introverted individual with few friends, her limited but significant relationships are central to the plot. There was limited horror elements in this book, but it was unnerving and left me feeling somewhat disturbed. As a plant scientist and avid reader, I was thrilled when I received approval of my ARC request, but it didn’t live up to my expectations.
 
The initial chapters (Part: SEED) had me immediately both hooked and horrified but the remainder of the novel did not live up to this opening. While SEED had me emotionally invested and intrigued; the rest of the story never quite elicited the same response. Considering the story follows apocalyptic sci-fi themes I was surprised that following SEED, the majority of the novel was snail-paced. I didn’t find the character interactions realistic or interesting enough to make up for the slow pace in story. Although, I really enjoyed Stasia reflecting on how she met the other characters and providing some context to their issues. This allowed me to feel more engaged and attached to their relationships, but these moments were few and far between. For the most part, I didn’t enjoy the internal monologue of Stasia, the main point of view. Honestly, I found Stasia to be one of the least interesting characters in the story and we were often told she was clever without necessarily demonstrating this. The novel picked up the pace again late in the story, but the ending left me wanting. Many major plot points were never addressed, left incomplete, or didn’t make logical sense- leading me to feel unsatisfied with the ending. The overarching comment on the negative aspects of humanity felt hypocritical coming from the narrator Stasia, who was lacking in empathy for people that had been fiercely loyal to her and her cat.
 
Certainly, Overgrowth was a unique story, that made me reflect well after completing the book and although the opening was spectacular, the remainder of the book didn’t meet the same energy.

Grant's talent for writing eerie, rich sci-fi coupled with a twist on the classic alien invasion plot made for a read I will not forget in a hurry. This book made me seesaw right along with the protagonist as she struggled to make choices that determined the fate of this story, and the point of view of the story added an interesting layer of depth to the book's themes of morality and what it means to be human, at the end of it all. If you enjoy alien invasion stories, definitely give this a read.

I had a few issues with this book.
I think the "days to invasion" countdown was too long, 50% through the book and we were still waiting for the aliens to come. The first half dragged and the main character kept repeating herself - "when my species come, I don't know what'll happen, but I know it'll be bad". It took away from the fear, because it was over-repeated and took too long to come to fruition.

I did like the mystery element of what the hell was going on, but I just wish the reveals came quicker. I did like the main character, except when she kept repeating herself.

I liked the premise and the imagination / thought put into the story, I can see a lot of people loving this book. But my biggest pet peve is repetition and plots being too slow, so I couldn't personally enjoy this book. I'm sad to say!

Thank you Netgalley and Daphne press for the chance to read this eARC edition.
This was a pretty solid sci-fi. It's definitely not my main genre but I enjoy the occasional dip and this one certainly lived up to expectations. The aliens were so interesting and unique. I wasn't sure which way the ending was going to go so it was fun to see it play out if rather depressing.
The main thing preventing it from being 5 stars was just that I found some of the supporting characters horrendously annoying and I would've liked a bit more time with the aliens.

Since she was a small child, Anastasia Miller has insisted that she’s an alien. Now a signal has been received: she really is an alien and the invasion (of maneating plants) is really coming.

In an homage to The Day of the Triffids, Overgrowth tells the story of an entity trying to reconcile her alien nature with her love for a select circle of humans.

A slowburning but witty sci fi adventure with great quirky characters perfect for fans of Grant’s Into The Drowning Deep.