Overgrowth by Mira Grant

I have loved Mira Grant before I ever heard of Seanan McGuire. I was first introduced to her work when her book Parasite, written as Mira Grant, was nominated for a Hugo Award - that year, the person in charge of ebook buying for my local library got copies of all of the Hugo nominated works and that one was by far my favorite. I loved it and quickly devoured the Newsflesh series before I realized that Mira Grant and Seanan McGuire were the same person. 

I started reading her works under her own name, starting with Sparrow Hill Road, which is amazing, but I picked it because I was intimidated by her long running October Daye series. I eventually fell in love with October and the Incryptid series, and her Velveteen Vs. series holds a very special place in my heart. 

But science fiction has always been my first love with fantasy coming in second place, so I have always gravitated towards the Mira Grant books. After Tor got the rights to publish more October Daye and Incryptid books from Astra (formerly known as DAW) I was wondering if they would also be putting out more Mira Grant titles. I’m so glad to be right!

I remembered reading the initial description of this book in 2023 on Ms. McGuire’s social media and thinking to myself “ oh, hey, she wrote an autobiography”. You see, I remembered reading an interview years ago where Ms. McGuire said that she firmly believed that she was the vanguard of an invasion of alien plant people - she came out of the woods as a child and told that to her family.  She has mentioned this on her old live journal and elsewhere over the years.  (I always personally wondered if this was a response to a childhood trauma but it is folly to try to armchair psychoanalyze someone you don’t know based on what they say online). But I was quite intrigued when Tor and NetGalley gave me an eARC of Overgrowth in exchange for an honest review. 

This book is excellent. The sense of creeping dread is palpable. I was enjoying this book but I kept having to put it down at different points to savor the impending doom - it is not a book to rush through. 

The characters feel very real in what slowly becomes a very unreal scenario.  I had a few quibbles with the government reactions at different points in the novel but all of it was very minor. The author described it as a “cozy apocalypse” novel, not meaning that the end of the world is relaxing , but that it has a very tight focus on the characters. That is a really good description. 

I really enjoyed this book and I cannot wait for the next Mira Grant novel.